


The Labyrinth Box

by SylvanFreckles



Series: Requests, Commissions, and Challenges! [3]
Category: Supernatural
Genre: Aftermath of Torture, Angst, Badass Castiel, Blind Castiel (Temporarily), Caring Sam Winchester, Demons, Gen, Hurt Castiel (Supernatural), Hurt/Comfort, Mother Hen Dean Winchester, Suspense, Temporary Blindness, The Key of Solomon, Torture, loss of senses, request fic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-03-15
Updated: 2020-06-28
Packaged: 2021-03-01 04:26:47
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 4
Words: 27,919
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23149216
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SylvanFreckles/pseuds/SylvanFreckles
Summary: A journal from the Men of Letters archive leads the boys to an old puzzle box in an abandoned crypt. When Sam accidentally triggers the box, Cas pushes him out of the way and gets pulled inside. Now they're in a race against time--the boys on the outside to find the key to open the box, and Cas on the inside to find the exit to the labyrinth. That box was built to contain something...and it might still be trapped there. With Cas.
Relationships: Castiel & Dean Winchester & Sam Winchester
Series: Requests, Commissions, and Challenges! [3]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1602808
Comments: 40
Kudos: 68





	1. Thus, in a labyrinth box I built a cage

**Author's Note:**

  * For [cocoa_caramel_macchiato_latte](https://archiveofourown.org/users/cocoa_caramel_macchiato_latte/gifts).



> Here it is! The long-awaited request fic for Cocoa_Caramel_Macchiato_Latte! And buckle up, guys, because this one is long! Also there are cliffhangers, so...yeah, sorry.

Dean leaned back in his chair, feet up on the table, and took a long sip of his beer as he scrolled through the latest pictures Mom and Jack had sent back from their hunt. A ghost haunting tourist traps along Route 66...some people got all the luck.

“Hey,” Sam settled in the chair opposite Dean. “Dude, feet off the table,” he complained, bitch-facing at Dean's boots.

“Shut up. Here, check this out,” Dean passed the phone across. Sam glanced through the pictures, a fond smile spreading across his face.

“World's largest ball of twine? That actually exists?”

“Probably better than the world's largest ball of hair you keep leaving in the shower drain,” Dean joked, taking his phone back. Sam rolled his eyes, ignoring the jab.

“Well, Cas is deep in the archive looking up some Babylonian texts,” Sam began. “Mom and Jack are looking for the world's tackiest traveling ghost. I think everyone else has their own hunt...it's just the three of us in the bunker right now.”

Dean raised his eyebrows, dropping his feet to the floor to lean across the table. “You know what that means.”

“No, Dean.”

“Movie night!”

“Dean...”

“I've got all the Sharknado movies.”

Sam's face wrinkled up in disgust. “I am not watching Sharknado. Again.”

Dean had opened his mouth to list all the reasons they definitely _should_ watch the Sharknado movies (hot chicks, mindless action, explosions, shark-filled tornadoes almost guaranteed to be the one thing they would never face) when Cas practically ran into the room with a heavy-looking leather-bound book in his hands.

“Sam!” the angel made a beeline for Sam, ignoring Dean completely, and laid the book out on the table. “Look at this!”

Sam leaned over the books, eyes widening in shock as he read whatever was on the page. “Are you serious?”

“There's more, see?” Cas turned the page. “It's a journal.”

“This is incredible!”

That was it. Dean slammed his beer bottle on the table slightly harder than was necessary, making the other two look up at him. “Wanna share with the class, fellas?”

“It's a journal,” Sam explained. Brilliantly, of course...Dean hadn't picked up on that when Cas had literally just said 'it's a journal'.

“I know that, dumbass,” Dean heaved himself up and stalked around the table to look over Sam's other shoulder. “What does it say?”

“It's from a man they refer to as 'The Disciple of Solomon',” Cas said. “It was transcribed by one of the Men of Letters during the time he traveled with this disciple.”

“Dean, do you see this?” Sam interrupted. He was jabbing a finger at the page excitedly. “They were researching a way to modify a devil's trap to exorcise whatever demon it trapped.”

“There's more,” Cas interrupted this time, flipping through the pages of the journal. “Look, here's something that could be a Hand of God. And this, this is a cleansing spell to rid a house of a poltergeist.”

Dean whistled, settling on the edge of the table, more to watch Sam and Cas geek out over this book than to read it himself. “Anything else in there?” he asked, taking another pull from his beer.

“He has a crypt,” Cas replied. “I think the disciple was building it to be his literal tomb, but it says he was sealing his greatest weapons and treasures in with him.”

“Does it say where?” Sam asked. Dean could see the wheels turning in his gigantic little brother's head.

“There are map coordinates in the back,” Cas turned to the last page of the journal. “I cross-checked it in the atlas...it's beneath an abandoned church in West Ridge, South Dakota.”

“Well, what are we waiting for?” Dean drained his beer and tossed the bottle into the garbage can, completely ignoring the recycling can right next to it just to get another bitch-face from Sammy. “Field trip!”

* * *

“Man, when you called this a crypt you weren't kidding.”

Sam tried not to roll his eyes, he really did, but it was obvious Dean wasn't taking their excursion very seriously. “You didn't have to come along, Dean.”

“Of course I did,” Dean retorted. He'd picked up an old-fashioned candlestick from one of the crypt's altars and was polishing dust off of it. “Who knows what trouble the two of you would get into without me?”

“Probably less,” Sam muttered to Cas. The angel wasn't paying much attention to the brothers' bickering—he'd learned how to tune them out over the years—and was focused on carefully wiping away the grime that covered a large mural on one wall.

“This is another story of the disciple's mission,” Cas explained, as though the argument behind him had never happened. “The journal, Sam?”

“Right.” Sam pulled the leather-bound book out of his bag and handed it over to Cas, who flipped through the pages for a few moments before passing it back.

“Vampires?” Sam raised his eyebrows at the entry Cas had opened to. “This guy hunted vampires?”

“Quite a few, it would appear,” Cas said as he cleared off the bottom of the mural. “See how these skulls are depicted with fangs?”

Dean leaned over Cas's shoulder and grunted. “They look like the werewolf ones.”

“No, Dean, these are elongated fangs with an exaggerated internal curve. The werewolf fangs were4 over-sized canine teeth.”

Sam could _feel_ Dean rolling his eyes. “So what does this tell us?” he interrupted, before his brother could say something sarcastic.

“Ir might explain why the Men of Letters were so impressed with this man,” Cas replied. He straightened up, absently dusting his hands on his trench coat. “But we're no closer to the weapons he supposedly left here.”

“Or treasures,” Dean interjected, hefting the candlestick he'd picked up. “Iron. Aren't these things usually silver?”

Sam ignored him, studying the mural more closely. The disciples' face was always obscured by a deep hood, but other than that the styles of the murals varied wildly. The one with the werewolves had been a fresco, this one was a mosaic, and they'd found another that was stained glass but the subject matter had been difficult to see in the darkened crypt.

“Sam!”

He spun around at Cas's voice and hurried over to the niche in the far side of the hall. “What is it?”

“This is a wooden panel,” Cas replied as he gently buffed the dust away from the panel's glassy surface. Sam's jaw dropped open in amazement. The panel was inlaid with gold and mother-of-pearl, depicting the now-familiar hooded form of the disciple. Except instead of a victorious scene or a field of battle, the disciple had one hand uplifted holding a glowing object. To the disciple's side, under his upraised arm, was a long-legged white bird, its wings flung out as though it was about to take flight. There was a border around the panel of Celtic knotwork, which seemed a little odd as the rest of the design had a distinctly Asian style.

“Whoa.” Dean was standing behind Sam now, lifting the camp lantern he'd been carrying up a little higher so they could see the panel more clearly. “Think this is one of the treasures?”

“The other murals were created directly on the walls,” Cas explained, passing his own light to Sam. “This may be removable.”

Sam took a step back as Cas ran his hands around the edge of the panel. Something gave with a sharp click, and the angel swung the entire panel to one side to reveal a hollow cut into the stone behind it.

“What is it?” Dean was crowding back in now, practically on top of Cas, as the angel swept dust and cobwebs out of the way to reveal a cloth-wrapped object.

“Over here,” Sam called, taking Cas's lantern over to the altar where Dean had been messing with the candlestick before. He dropped his bag to the ground, journal tucked safely inside, and moved the candlesticks and a dusty bowl to one side to make room for Cas to set down the object.

The fabric looked like linen, and when Cas slowly unwound it Sam could see that the inside of the fabric was coated with wax. His breath caught in his throat when the object was finally revealed.

It was a box, a little less than half the size of a bread box. It looked like it was made with the same kind of wood as the panel, and inlaid in gold and mother-of-pearl in the same style.

“This is kanji,” Sam commented, tracing his fingers down the delicate letters that covered half of the box's lid. “And that bird again.” It looked like the same bird from the panel, though its wings were folded as though at rest.

“Can you read it, Cas?” Dean asked.

Cas shook his head. “It's gibberish. It mentions something about a puzzle box to trap an evil spirit, but the syntax makes no sense.”

“What, like someone used Google translate on it?”

Sam glared at his brother but Cas was nodding. “I could probably translate the original meaning in time, but I would say this is one of the items the disciple was hiding here.”

“It's beautiful,” Sam commented. The same kind of knotwork that was on the panel wound around the edges of the lid, and the sides of the box were etched in delicate swirls of gold set with tiny, semi-precious stones winking in the cold glare of the lantern. There wasn't an obvious latch on it—of course, if it really was a puzzle box that made sense. There would be a physical trigger somewhere, either a hidden switch or a series of manipulations.

“We should see if this is in the journal,” Cas was saying, leaning past Sam to get into his bag.

The younger Winchester just nodded as he lifted up the box to check beneath it. The same golden filigree that covered the sides also covered the bottom, so only the top was inlaid. It was amazing—no obvious physical trigger or seam of any kind.

It was just the sort of box that would hide the kind of knowledge they so desperately needed.

“Sam?”

His fingers brushed over the thumbnail-sized opal set on one side of the box. It was strangely warm to the touch, almost glowing with its own internal light.

“Sammy?”

If he could just unlock its secrets. There was something in there, something they needed.

“Sam!” Something crashed into him, yanking the box from his hands just as Sam realized the golden glow from the opal was spreading over the box itself. He sprawled to the dusty stone floor, head swimming and ears ringing, and looked up to see Cas standing over the table. The angel was holding the box, the golden light creeping up his arms even as his own eyes blazed blue as he fought the power of the spell.

"Cas!” Dean charged for their friend, but a sharp jerk of Cas's head sent the older Winchester crashing down next to the younger. “The hell, man!”

“I can't hold it,” Cas grunted, doubling over on himself with the box pressed to his chest. “It's pulling...pulling me in.”

“Let go, man!” Dean struggled back to his feet, but another sharp motion from Cas had him back on the ground again.

“Stay back. Both of you. It's too strong!” Cas twisted away, obviously unleashing his full power on the spell dragging at him. Sam had to squeeze his eyes shut as the crypt was filled with heavenly light, but even that couldn't block it completely.

“Cas!”

Cas gave a strangled shout, and the light in the crypt suddenly winked out.

Then it was silent, except for the sound of a wooden box falling to the floor.

* * *

He had been torn through the ether, banished to the gates of heaven, traveled through the depths of hell...but nothing quite prepared Castiel for the pull of the lacquered box.

There was a sense of darkened passages spiraling around him, gates slamming, layers of spellwork pressing into his very essence to bind around him with ephemeral chains.

Then he was falling, his body crashing to a rough stone floor similar to that of the disciple's crypt. Castiel curled around himself for a moment, the harsh spellwork of the trap sending unpleasant sensations through his essence. It was not something that had been designed to trap an angel, he decided. Only his determination to take Sam's place had kept the trap focused on him instead of his human friend.

Slowly, carefully, Castiel climbed to his feet to study his surroundings. He was at a crossroads, long stone halls stretching out in four directions around him. The walls seemed to be rough, uneven stones set together without mortar, and the ceiling vaulted with low arches for the doorways. Torches and braziers were set at even intervals down every tunnel, providing a low, flickering light.

It was reminiscent of the crypt, but Castiel could feel in the air around him that he was in a different place. It was more like the pocket dimensions Gabriel had created than any other plane of existence he had visited; as though the only thing to this world was the area defined by the walls of the prison, despite the prison itself being contained by a spell-trapped box.

But more than that. A quick investigation of the four tunnels that branched away from him confirmed his suspicions. Each tunnel twisted or split into different directions, nothing but endless stone and flickering light.

It was a labyrinth.

* * *

“What the hell!” Dean was back on his feet in a moment and surging across the tunnel to grab up the box that had just swallowed Cas.

“Wait, Dean! Don't touch it!”

He ignored Sam's warning, hefting the box up and squeezing his eyes against the burst of light that would pull him in, too...but nothing happened. Dean stared at the box, shook it, turned it over in his hands, and finally spun to stare at Sam. “What the hell?”

“I...I don't know,” Sam spread his hands helplessly. “Here, set it back down here,” the younger Winchester spread the wax-coated cloth across the altar.

“It ate Cas!” Dean protested as he deposited the box. “What the hell, Sammy?”

“I don't know! I just...” Sam was raking his hands through his hair, his eyes wide and panicked. “Dean, this is all my fault.”

Dean shook his head, not wanting to start that. He and Cas had both been trying to pull Sam's attention away from the box, but it almost seemed like he'd been transfixed on it. And hell, Cas had only been sucked into it because he'd gotten to Sam first, or else it would be Dean stuck in magic-box-land and Cas out here with Sam.

Come to think of it, that was probably a better arrangement. He knew Cas was a match for whatever nasties might be lurking in some ancient trap dimension...but he wasn't to sure he himself was up for figuring out how to bring the angel home.

“Let's just figure out how to open it, okay?” he said, spinning the box around on the cloth. “Is there anything else in the wall there?”

Sam was staring at the box, eyes still wide, face still frozen with a mix of panic and guilt.

“Sam!”

The younger Winchester snapped out of it, blinking over at Dean. “What? Oh, yeah...I'll check it out.”

Dean retrieved their lanterns from the floor and set them up next to the box. It was cool to the touch, the wood dark and quiet beneath the inlaid designs. No sign of the golden light that had taken Cas.

“I found something!”

He followed Sam's voice to the niche where they'd discovered the wooden panel. Sammy was brushing dust off the back of the panel to reveal some faded writing. “I think it's a poem, can you hand me the flashlight?”

Dean passed the light over, squinting through the darkness to see the faded writing. “How can you tell?”

“The structure of the lines. Three groups of four lines, then a pair of lines at the end.”

Dean's stare must have almost had a physical weight, because Sam huffed out a sigh. “A sonnet, Dean. It's the structure of a sonnet.”

Well, wasn't that fancy. “And what does it say?”

“It's too faded,” Sam shook his head. “Maybe we can take this off, get it back to the bunker. There might be something there to restore it.”

“Might be something there to open this box,” Dean added. Hell, he'd cut the damn thing open if he had to. “All right, see if you can knock it off the hinges or something.”

He left Sam muttering about pins and rust to stare back at the box. The damn thing was just lying where he'd left it, completely dark and inert like it hadn't just trapped his best friend in some unknown dimension. He glanced over at his brother for a second, then turned so his back was to Sam and picked the box back up.

Dean turned the thing around in his hands, trying to remember how Sam and Cas had been holding it. Was there a pressure point on the sides? All he could feel was the rough ridges of inlaid gold and smooth, cold stones.

“Dean!” Sam threw the wax-coated linen over the box and plucked it out of his brother's hands. “What are you doing?”

He rolled his eyes and grabbed Sam's bag to hold it open so his younger brother could stuff the box inside.

“I'm worried about him too,” Sam continued. “But, Dean, we can't just rush into this like that. What if there's a way to open it from the outside but not the inside? Or we find a password? What if you got trapped in there with him?”

Dean let his brother scold him as he gathered up the rest of their gear. He knew, every protest Sam was throwing at him about why Dean shouldn't try to get sucked into the box was just one more thing he was worrying about for Cas.

“You ready?” Dean cut his brother off mid-rant, holding a hand out for one of the items Sam was carrying. Between the back and the wooden panel the younger Winchester was heavily weighed down. Sam glowered and shoved the panel into his hands, stalking away ahead of him out of the crypt into the decrepit church.

He stared down at the panel in his hands for a long moment. It had seemed beautiful and mysterious when they'd first found it, but now the faceless figure in the center just seemed sinister. And the bird...Dean was almost sure he'd seen a bird like that somewhere before.

“Dean?”

“Yeah,” he called up, tucking the panel under one arm. “Let's get out of here.

* * *

Another dead end.

Castiel allowed himself a moment to sigh in anger and frustration before turning back the way he had come. If only this labyrinth had been contained in a physical dimension, he could have used the magnetic force of the earth to orient himself. As it was he had to rely on his own memory and internal sense of direction—which were quite good, in all honesty.

But with the labyrinth twisted on, every turn and path nearly identical to the ones before it.

He was not lost. He didn't _get_ lost. He was merely disheartened by the sameness of his surroundings.

Castiel rested a hand on the rough stone of the wall and closed his eyes to visualize the parts of the labyrinth he'd already explored. He was systematically exploring the passages, mapping them out in his head one by one. It was no small feat, even for an angel, but it was far preferable to wandering blindly.

At least at this junction the passages seemed to change. The rough stone of the early walls gradually gave way to shaped stone bricks, the crude torches and braziers becoming metal sconces set near the ceiling. He drew his angel blade and knelt to cross out the mark he'd made in the floor of the passage he'd just came from, making another in the floor of the next. He didn't need the marks, of course, but Castiel had no doubt that it was only a matter of time before one or both Winchesters followed him into the labyrinth. They would need a way to find him.

For the first time since he'd been pulled into the box, Castiel began to notice signs of life in the labyrinth. Scuffs on the floor and walls, sconces twisted or missing altogether. He tried to extend his sense, but the pressure of the spellwork around him muffled his grace with almost bruising force.

A whisper of movement down one of the side tunnels had him ducking behind the adjacent wall for cover, angel blade up and ready. There had been a sound—the scrape of a foot on stone or the rustle of a long garment—but when he slowly peered around the corner there was nothing.

There was someone—or something—very much alive in this labyrinth.

* * *

“Here, on the table,” Sam cleared the research materials he'd been looking at a few days before so Dean could lay the wooden panel down, backside up. “Do you remember that stuff Bobby used to use to restore burned documents?”

“The magic CSI powder,” Dean nodded. “Think that'll help?”

“It's worth a shot,” Sam replied. Bobby had rescued more than one old book or scrap of paper that other hunters had given up on, and his 'magic CSI powder' had been a closely kept secret.

“Here we go,” Dean tossed the jar of powder to Sam. “Still got that journal?”

“Good idea,” Sam dropped his bag on the table next to the wooden panel. “There might be something in here about the box.”

“Or the crap on it,” his brother replied. “I swear, I've seen this bird somewhere before.”

Sam glanced at the box again, but there wasn't anything remarkable about the bird that he could see. Just a long-legged, white bird of some kind—maybe a crane or a stork. He gently opened the little jar of powder and picked up a soft brush from the tray of research instruments he'd left on the table.

He slowly brushed the powder over the faded letters in front of him. The powder would react to the traces of ink left in the wood and darken to show what had been written there, but it wouldn't be perfect. The wood had dried and cracked, and the ink had soaked into the wood around it, so instead of clean text he got jumbled, misshapen letters.

“I think this says 'labyrinth',” he called to Dean.

Dean abandoned the journal to crane over his shoulder. “'Labyrinth...fox'?”

Sam snorted. “Probably 'box'. It looks like 'a labyrinth box' but I can't make the rest out. The last word might be cage?”

“Hang on,” Dean grabbed at the journal again. “I saw something about a cage...right, here, the disciple 'through wit and cunning devised a trap to cage the demon Shax'.” He paused, staring thoughtfully at the words. “I don't know which one's worse, the idiot who wrote this or the guy who made the box that ate Cas.”

“Shax...” Sam took the journal out of Dean's hand and scanned the page. “Hang on a second...see this symbol?” he passed the journal back over and hurried over to a thick tome on one of the other tables. “I've seen it before, and that name...here we go! The demon Shax. Dean, he's mentioned in the _Key of Solomon_.”

“Yeah?” Dean wandered over to peer down at the book. The copy the Men of Letters had was much nicer than the one Bobby had given them all those years ago. It had more illustrations and old-fashioned illuminated letters...the same information, so it was just as good as Bobby's dog-eared copy, but it was certainly prettier to look at. “Sammy...do you see this?”

Sam glanced down to the spot Dean was pointing out on the page. “Yeah, it says he could appear in the form of a stork.”

“A stork,” Dean was staring at him now. “White bird, long legs?”

Sam's stomach dropped. “Oh my god.” He practically ran back to the wooden panel and gently turned it over. There were the details he'd overlooked before—long, thick bill, black trim at the edges of the wings. It was a stork. “The box?”

“As far as I can tell,” Dean replied. He had his phone out, an image search for storks on the screen. “Sammy...”

“I know,” Sam cut his brother off. The situation was even worse than he'd been thinking.

Cas was trapped in the labyrinth box with an ancient, powerful demon.

* * *

He carefully checked the next corner before moving around it, trying to stick to the shadows cast by the flickering sconces. There were more and more signs of the labyrinth's occupant now. There were walls where the stones were covered in crude images, most of them lewd or violent. Castiel had found passages caved in and walls dug away, as though someone had tried to tunnel out.

But that was nothing compared to the gate.

It looked like a simple stone arch, as plain as the rough stones in the first passage Castiel had explored. Except he could see nothing beyond the arch, and when he tried to press his hand through some force on the other side repelled him. As far as he could sense there was nothing on the other side of this archway.

The only adornment on the arch was the keystone at the top, which bore an inscription naming it The Gate of the Flesh. Castiel could not pass through it, could not break a stone free, and when he'd gingerly sliced his hand to see if a blood offering was needed there was no reaction from the silent stones.

He'd been able to sense the labyrinth's occupant at the edge of his awareness, as though it was watching his every movement. It had seemed to draw closer when he approached the gate, but had disappeared back out of his sight when he turned away.

It was unnerving. Castiel could hear it all the time now, the echo of steps or a low rasp of breath. Blade in hand, he crept along the wall through the next archway, only to find himself in a crossroads similar to the one where he'd first appeared.

 _There!_ A whisper of movement to his left had Castiel spinning around, blade brought up to guard, but he was only fast enough to catch a glimpse of a large, dark figure darting around the edge of the room to get behind him. He twisted, trying to keep the thing in his sights, but it moved with uncanny speed and was inside his guard before he could react.

A large, rough hand slammed into his chin from below, knocking him back, and another captured his sword arm and twisted the blade away. He had a glimpse of a man, a vessel containing an ancient and powerful demon, then the demon snarled and covered his face with one hand. Castiel could feel the demon's power battering against his own, caging his grace, draining his strength. The world around him grayed, then went dark as the demon's foul magics rolled over him.

"Well, well, well." The demon's voice was a growl, its breath the reek of sulfur and brimstone. "Hello...angel."


	2. And in five sacred riddles hid the key

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry for the delay! I hope you're staying safe, sane, and healthy! I've been using most of my free time to sew masks for some local hospitals, so I haven't had much time to write, but I finally finished this chapter!
> 
> At least it's a long one? (18 pages compared to the 7 that was average in Whumptober)
> 
> I had to up the rating to T and put a violence tag on this. It gets a little dark.

The demon's spell twisted around him until even the eyes of his true form were blinded. His sword arm had been bent back to an almost unnatural angle, until Castiel could swear he felt the bones creaking, but the hand on his face had shifted to his throat. He could feel the movement in the air as the demon leaned closer, smell the stink of its breath as it peered into his face to see the effects of its own spell.

Castiel struck. His sword arm was still held in the demon's grasp, but with his free arm he aimed a blow at where the demon's face should have been. There was a dark laugh, then his foe released him only to step out of range and grab Castiel by the back of his coat to slam him face-first into the wall of the passage.

“My powers don't usually work on your kind,” the demon taunted, pressing itself against the angel to hold him to the wall. “Tell me, is it this damned box we're trapped in? Or is it something more?”

He snarled and tried to buck the demon off, but a fist tangled in Castiel's hair and bashed his head into the wall, hard enough that he felt his nose break.

“Are you fallen, little angel?” the demon asked. “Ooh, or is it heaven? Was it the war?”

Castiel grit his teeth. It didn't matter how innocuous the questions might seem, or how inconsequential the information. He would not give this abomination anything it wanted. “You'll have to try harder than that,” he growled over his shoulder, coughing out a mouthful of blood from his broken nose.

“Oh, I intend to,” the demon replied. It spun him away from the wall and twisted a foot between his legs to knock him to the floor.

He kicked out, one foot connecting with his unseen enemy, who gave a grunt and stumbled away. Castiel rolled to his feet, angel blade held out in a guard position, backing toward the passage from which he'd entered the crossroads.

“Where do you think you're going?” the demon taunted. It had raised its voice until it echoed off the vaulted ceiling, which helped disguise its location from the blind angel. “Do you really think you're any match for me like this?”

Castiel's mind whirled, settling on something Dean might say. “Perhaps I thought you would need the advantage,” he retorted. He spun his blade in his hand, confident of its weight and hold even with his eyes blinded.

It laughed again. “I think I like you, little angel,” the demon said. Castiel heard it move closer and dodged to one side, but he wasn't quite fast enough to avoid the blow. It glanced off his shoulder rather than catching him in the chest, and he tried to turn away from the blow to use the momentum from it to counterattack.

The wall was closer than he'd thought, unfortunately, and Castiel's blade struck the stone of the labyrinth rather than completing the turn.

“Gotcha.” A hand closed over his arm again, this time twisting it up and behind him until the bones gave with an audible crack and his angel blade fell to the floor.

Breathing through the pain, Castiel tried to kick off the wall closest to him but the demon simply wrapped both arms around his chest, pinning his broken arm behind him, and hauled him up and back until his feet were kicking out into the air with no purchase.

The demon's grip shifted, one hand wrapping around Castiel's throat again. He tried to pry the fingers loose with his free hand, but his enemy's grasp was too strong. The demon twisted, easily flipping Castiel over its hip without breaking the hold on his neck, and slammed him down onto the floor. Weight settled onto the break in the angel's arm, and despite himself he cried out at the pain.

“Nighty-night, little birdie,” the demon taunted in a sing-song voice. Castiel heard the scrape of metal on stone, but had no way to dodge as his enemy brought the pommel of his own angel blade down against his temple, knocking the angel senseless.

* * *

Dean strode into the library, stuffing extra ammunition clips into his bag as he walked (one of sanctified iron rounds, one of devil's trap bullets). “Find anything?”

“Yeah, something about five sacred riddles,” Sam replied. He had the journal in front of him, and what looked like half the library spread out on the tables around him. “It looks like the disciple actually used a few of the spells from here to lock his box from the inside. This book describes something called 'riddle gates', like they're locked with challenges or puzzles.”

“Yeah? Any idea which ones?” Dean dropped his bag on the only clear surface on the table and rifled through it for a final check of his gear. They'd agreed that Dean would try to get into the box to rescue Cas, hoping Sam would find info on how to get back out, and Sam would wait twenty-four hours before coming in after both of them if they hadn't made it out (Dean had tried for forty-eight, but that hadn't gone over well).

“I've got some possibilities,” Sam replied. He held up a little spiral-bound notebook. “These look like the most likely.”

“Great, thanks,” Dean took the notebook and flipped through it. “Any other ideas?”

“Dean...”

He looked up. Sammy was staring down at a page in the book in front of him, his face twisted up in worry. “Hey, come on,” Dean leaned against the edge of the table and rested a hand on his brother's shoulder. “This is great, Sammy. More than we thought we'd get, right?”

“It's not that,” Sam shook his head. “I, uh...I found a spell that was written by the same guy who wrote the journal.”

“Yeah?” Dean craned his neck to look at the book. “Think that means they used it?”

“It's called 'The Gate of the Flesh'.”

“Gross,” Dean gave an exaggerated shudder, but Sammy didn't even bitch-face. “And?”

Sam sighed. “Only a mortal soul can pass through, Dean.”

Dean's gut twisted. “So maybe Cas did find the gates, but couldn't get through because he's an angel.”

“Dean, he might not be able to get through at all.”

The older Winchester shook his head. “Not happening.”

“Dean...”

“No way,” he pushed away from the table and went back to his bag. “It's a spell, right? That means we can counter it...break the sigils, blow out the candles, something, right?”

Sam twisted in his seat to watch Dean, his shoulders slumped in exhaustion or defeat. “I don't know.”

“There's a way,” Dean replied. “Hell, I'll let him hitch a ride with me and drag his meatsuit through. Think that'd work?”

“I don't know,” Sam gave another sigh. “Dean, if you can't get him out...if I...”

“Hey,” Dean held up one hand. “Come on, what does Mom always say at a time like this?”

Sam almost smiled. “Don't borrow trouble?”

“What? No. Why would she...dude, what do you think our mom sounds like? No, she'd say listen to your much handsomer brother.”

That actually got him a smile. Dean shrugged his pack on his back and double-checked the gun in his waistband and the angel blade in his jacket. “Okay, any idea how to start this thing?” he asked as he picked up the box.

“Yeah. I think you have to _want_ to open it,” Sam replied, standing up to join him.

“Okay...got that already,” Dean shook the box. Still nothing. Still as cold and quiet as when he'd touched it in the crypt.

“No, Dean, you have to really want it. For yourself.”

Dean looked over at his brother, who was staring at the table with his shoulders hunched. “Sammy?”

“Selfishly,” Sam shrugged. “When I touched it, it was like I couldn't put it down. Like it had everything I could ever need inside.”

Friggin magic boxes.

Dean focused on the box, trying to picture what he needed that might fit inside. Cash would be nice. Maybe a burger. Those would fit in the box.

“No, dude,” as though guessing his thoughts Sam interrupted, folding his arms and leaning one hip against the table. “Not an object. More like...like a secret. Or a key to something.”

Right. Sammy would probably have better lucking thinking about something like that, but no way was Dean letting both his brothers get trapped in the labyrinth box. He closed his eyes and tried to focus on the box again, on what secret thing they might need out of it.

Cas. There was something they needed. No, screw that, something they _wanted_. More than anything, Dean wanted to bring his other brother, his best friend, home. No matter what it took, no matter what crappy spells or bloodthirsty demons were in his way.

_Give him back, you son of a bitch!_

* * *

Someone was tightening something around his left wrist. Castiel twisted to that side, trying to squint through the darkness blanketing his vision but could see nothing. Before he had time to comprehend what this meant, someone wrenched his right arm up and consciousness and memory roared back in with a scream.

The labyrinth. The demon. The fight that left him with a badly-broken arm.

The spell that left him blind.

“Awake now, little birdie?” the demon sneered as it knotted the binding around his right wrist, which felt like it had swollen to twice its normal size. “I was beginning to think you'd sleep through all the fun.”

Dean would have had a biting remark on the nature of what the demon found fun. Sam would have had a disarming argument about the value of cooperation to escape the labyrinth.

All Castiel had was silence.

The demon growled and hauled him up by the arms, the pain from his broken right arm nearly enough to render him senseless again. His arms were stretched over his head to hang on one of the metal sconces he'd seen in the labyrinth's walls. It was just high enough that he couldn't lift his arms over the sconce easily with the injuries he'd sustained, but low enough that he could stand to relieve the pressure on his wounded arm.

“I had nothing but the clothes on my back when I arrived here,” the demon explained, carefully unbuttoning Castiel's shirt. The angel realized his coats had already been removed, the stone of the wall behind him cold through the thin fabric he was wearing. “I've had to be creative. Really, you should _see_ my little den here.”

There was a dark chuckle from the demon, but Castiel just turned his face away rather than react. The rope around his wrists was odd, smooth and soft...it was his tie, he realized. He should have been strong enough to snap it without a thought, but then again he should have been able to heal the break in his arm or even his nose by now.

“Now. Do you have a name, little bird?” the demon asked. Its rough hands were on Castiel's face, forcing him back around to face the demon even if he could not see it. “We could be friends, you know.”

There were spells that made use of an angel's name. A demon this old and powerful could very well know them. Castiel's kept silent, even as the almost gentle pressure on his cheekbones pressed further and further in on his face until with a great, wrenching pain the demon had set the break in his nose straight.

“Can't have a twisted beak ruining your pretty face, birdie” the demon teased. It was leaning over him now, its vessel looming over Castiel by a few inches. One of its hands had moved away, the other was stroking the angel's neck with a twisted sort of familiarity. “Just your name, hmm? What harm could that do?”

With effort, Castiel managed to turn away from the demon's foul touch. He bit back a yelp of pain when the abomination backhanded him hard enough to split his cheek.

“Don't turn away from me, little one,” the demon said. It was crowding in closer now, one hand capturing Castiel's chin to pull his face up until he felt the beast's foul breath on his face. “There's no way out of here for either of us, you know. Might as well make this a pleasant arrangement.”

Castiel pulled in a shuddering breath, already bracing for the pain that would follow. “Go back to hell,” he snarled.

The demon snarled and shoved him back against the stone, leaving Castiel scrambling to keep his balance even as he felt his enemy's hands at his waist. The demon tugged Castiel's belt free and gave the leather a few experimental snaps in the air. “Very cute,” it hissed. “Want to try again?”

He steadied himself as best he could and raised his head in defiance, trying to glare with sightless eyes. “Go back to hell... _please_?”

Naomi would tell him Dean was a bad influence. Dean would give him an incomprehensible human compliment and make him drink beer.

The belt struck him across the face. The demon's fingers tangled in his hair and pulled his head back and the belt struck again and again, leaving welts of red-hot pain across his face and down his neck.

“All this pain,” the demon said, its voice almost soothing as it rested the hand with the belt under Castiel's chin to force his head up, while its other hand pushed his shirt open to stroke the bare skin of his chest. “All I wanted was your name, little bird. Just one little name.”

Castiel grit his teeth. The demon's touch was worse than the pain of the beating. He could feel its power prodding at his grace, trying to assess the strength of his true form. When he didn't answer the demon snarled again and drove its fist into his solar plexus, right below his ribcage, The demon stepped away and Castiel gasped for air, but even as he fought to maintain his balance the belt struck again. His chest and stomach were the targets this time, and the demon had shifted its grip so that the metal of the buckle was biting into Castiel's flesh now.

He turned his face away, hiding it against the sleeve of his uninjured arm as the beating continued. Then it stopped, he heard the belt fall to the ground, and the demon's footsteps echoed in the space around them as it walked away from him.

“I'm not asking much, you know,” the demon said. It was walking back now, and Castiel still twisted away when it got close enough to rest one hand on his vulnerable throat. “I'm not asking where you came from, or how you got in here, or if you know another way out. Just your name, angel.”

The touch of celestial steel was familiar enough, even if the demon wasn't pressing to draw blood. It lightly drew the angel blade down Castiel's cheek to his neck, then down his sternum to rest the tip between two of his ribs. “One more time. Your name.”

Castiel turned his head to face the demon, even if he could not see it, and twisted his features into a scowl of contempt even as the blade slowly bit into his flesh. He pulled his grace in tightly, channeling it away from healing his wounds even as the demon twisted the blade.

“In the words...of a friend...” he gasped. “Bite me.”

The demon gave a snarl of rage and ripped the blade free. Before Castiel could even choke back his cry of pain he was spun around, the binding twisted on his wrists, his chest pressed against the stone wall as the demon bunched his shirt up to his neck to expose his back.

“Do. Not. Mock. Me.” Every snarled world was punctuated with a slash from the angel blade across Castiel's back. He arched away from the pain, almost mindlessly, tasting blood as he tried to bite back his own screams.

The demon blade clattered to the floor, but without a moment's respite the demon had picked up the belt again and lashed at the fresh cuts it had just made. Castiel's knees buckled, and he cried out when his weight pulled on his broken arm.

Finally the demon took a step back, dropping the belt to the floor. “We could have been friends, little bird,” it rasped.

Castiel hauled himself back to his feet with his good arm and slowly twisted around to face his enemy. His wounded back was pressed to the stone, and while the touch was painful the coolness of the labyrinth wall was a blessed relief. “We would...never...have been friends,” he panted.

“True,” it conceded. “But you could have spared yourself this. All I wanted was your name.”

He tried to work up an answer, but the labyrinth began to shake around them with a thunderous roar. There was an unexpected rush of air, then the echoing slam of some door somewhere deeper in the tunnels.

“Well, well, well,” the demon said, its voice tinged with surprise. “Looks like we have another visitor.”

Castiel grit his teeth. The demon was distracted, if only for a moment. He summoned what he'd been able to reserve of his grace and with a mighty heave snapped the tie that had been binding his wrists together. The demon made a surprised sound, and Castiel lunged for it with his left hand, forcing an outward burst of grace to burn the abomination out of existence.

The demon gave a roar of anger and caught him by the wrist before he could make contact. The demon's elbow caught Castiel under the chin, and its foot swept behind his ankle to drop him to the rough stone floor.

“Still have some spark, eh?” the demon sneered. It rested one knee on Castiel's left arm, and he heard the tell-tale scrape of metal on stone before the demon seized him by the right wrist to stretch his broken arm out.

“No, don't!” he cried, a horrible foreboding filling his mind, just before the demon slammed the angel blade through the joint of his broken arm and into the stone floor up to the hilt, pinning it in place.

“I'll be back for you, birdie,” the demon hissed, carding one hand through Castiel's hair before it stood to run back down the unseen tunnels. Its dark laughed echoed in his head, even as the pain overwhelmed Castiel and pulled him down into unconsciousness again.

* * *

The landing was rough, Dean's feet nearly sliding out from under him when he finally, _finally_ , managed to trigger the trap on the labyrinth box.

And it was...a labyrinth. There were torches on the walls, so he stuffed his flashlight in his back pocket and pulled his gun out instead. The stones were basically featureless, identical arches opening onto identical passages.

Dean crouched in front of one of the arches, staring down at a symbol scratched into the floor. Maybe they weren't so identical after all. They all had the same Enochian run dug into the stone, but three of them had a line carved through them.

“You son of a bitch,” Dean murmured, a grin spreading across his face. “Better than breadcrumbs.”

His head snapped up when a scream echoed down the corridors of the labyrinth. “Cas?” Dean called. There was no answer, of course, as the scream had been faint...but undeniable. Dean swore and hurried through the tunnels, checking for signs at every intersection. Cas's path was fairly easy to follow, and it looked like he'd cleared pretty much all the tunnels in this area.

Finally, Dean came to an intersection that wasn't fully marked. It was another four-way: the tunnel he'd come through had the same mark he'd been following, the one to his right had the mark crossed out, but the one across had the mark with a second symbol next to it. The fourth tunnel was blank.

Dean crouched over the marking with the second symbol to study it. There was a faint sound behind him, and instinct more than anything else had Dean rolling forward to avoid a sudden blow, turning as he did to bring his gun around to bear on whoever had tried to sneak up on him.

It was a man. Or demon, probably. Weaponless but big, long dark hair hanging in tangles behind his back and his clothes rough and torn. He bared teeth that had been filed down to points and lashed out at him again, obviously used to tackling his foes bare-handed (kind of an interesting change from the faceless, suited minions that had taken over everything after Crowley left).

Dean easily dodged back, his gut tightening when he saw fresh blood splatters on the demon's tunic. “Lemme guess. You're Shax.”

Shax threw back his head with a dark laugh. “Are you here to rescue that cute little birdie?”

“He has a name,” Dean retorted.

“Well,” Shax casually brushed at his tunic, as though trying to wipe the blood away, “He never managed to tell me.”

Ice flooded Dean's veins. He raised the gun until the sights lined up with the demon's head. Shax just laughed at him again. “I don't know what you think that will do. That little peashooter can't hurt me.”

“Maybe,” Dean squeezed the trigger, a sanctified iron bullet nailing Shax in his grinning teeth. “Maybe not.”

The demon twitched and pawed at his mouth, coughing out blood, hands scrabbling at his throat. Dean fired again, hitting Shax in the stomach this time, just for good measure. “So, where is he?”

The demon snarled and coughed something out in a spray of blood and saliva. Dean swore and shielded his face with one arm as something exploded, and when he looked back the demon was gone.

He swore again. The kind of words that always had Sammy pretending to be shocked. There was a splatter of blood that lead down the unmarked tunnel, and Dean took off after it. This thing had hurt Cas, badly by the looks of it. No way was it getting away. He followed the blood through the branching tunnels, listening to the demon's distant footsteps ahead of him.

Dean rounded a corner and came to...some kind of den. Stones had been piled up to resemble furniture, a couple braziers dragged in to light the place up, but he barely noticed any of that. Everything else seemed to fade when he saw the demon bent over the crumpled form of his best friend to yank an _angel blade_ out of Cas's arm.

“You son of a bitch!” Dean roared, dropping into a firing stance to unload the rest of the clip into the demon's back. The sanctified rounds weren't enough to kill the demon, unfortunately, but did make it drop the blade and back away from Cas. Dean reached for his own angel blade but Shax was already fleeing down a different tunnel, away from the intersection where he'd met Dean.

“Cas?” Dean dropped to his knee beside his friend. Cas's shirt was soaked in blood, his stomach, chest, and face a mass of welts and bruises. There was a stab wound in his left side, and his right arm was twisted at impossible angles. But worst of all, when Cas finally opened his eyes, was the blank stare that seemed to look right through Dean.

“Dean?”

“Yeah, buddy, I'm here,” Dean rested one hand on the side of Cas's face, frowning at how clammy the angel's skin was. “Dammit, what did he do to you?”

Cas shuddered and closed his eyes. “The demon...it took my sight.”

“That's not all,” Dean muttered. Cas had rolled on his side to curl around his injured arm, and Dean slowly peeled up the hem of Cas's shirt. He swallowed and dropped the stained fabric—Cas's back was as torn and bruised as the rest of him. “We gotta get going, Cas. Shax'll be back any minute.”

The name, at least, seemed to rouse Cas. “Shax?”

“Yeah, found him in the _Key of Solomon_ ,” Dean explained as he gently pulled Cas up to lean against him. The book had said Shax could steal the senses of his enemies, but Dean never would have guessed that kind of spell would work on an angel. “Sit tight, I'll be right back.”

There was no chance of splinting Cas's arm, not with the time and supplies they had right now, but they could strap it to Cas's chest for support. Dean had spotted Cas's belt on the floor, though he had no idea why the demon would have taken it off on the first place...then he noticed the stains. Rusty-red, still tacky to the touch, leaving dark smears on his fingers when he prodded at them.

He threw the belt to the side. There had to be something else, something that hadn't been used to beat his friend to shit and back.

Dean spotted a piece of light-colored fabric in one corner, and when he checked it out realized the demon had just dumped Cas's coats off to one side. The trench coat had a belt of its own, one that was softer than the leather belt Cas had been wearing.

Stuffing the rest of the coats into his backpack, Dean crouched next to Cas again. “We gotta...I gotta strap your arm up, okay?”

The angel swiveled to face him, brow wrinkled in concern. “Dean?”

“I don't have anything to make a splint, man. I can tie your arm to your chest, it's gonna hurt a hell of a lot less, okay?”

Cas stared in his direction, and Dean had to look away rather than look at those empty eyes. “All right, Dean.”

At least Sammy had had the foresight to shove a couple of rolls of bandages into Dean's pack, though it wasn't nearly enough to treat all of the angel's injuries. It was just enough to wrap the stab wounds in his arm and side, and strap his broken arm to his chest with the trench coat belt on top. Cas had been silent through the treatment, but Dean had felt the angel's hand shaking where it rested on the hunter's shoulder.

“C'mon, Cas,” Dean shrugged into his pack and crouched down again, wrapping the angel's good arm around his shoulders. “Let's get going.”

Cas gave a grunt and let Dean help him to his feet, staying upright though he stumbled a bit when he got there.

“We've gotta find a gate,” Dean explained, following the blood back to the intersection where he'd met Shax. He'd reloaded his gun with devil's-trap bullets this time—still not as satisfying as killing the bastard, but it'd have to do. No way was he letting that creep anywhere near Cas again.

“Found one,” Cas rasped. “Gate of...Gate of the Flesh.”

“That's awesome,” Dean forced as much warmth into his voice as he could. “Is that the second symbol? I found your breadcrumbs.”

He knew it was bad when Cas just nodded instead of correcting him that they were Enochian runes carved into stone and not scraps of a baked good. “Dean...I couldn't get through the gate.”

Dean let out a sigh. “Yeah, sounds about right. I've got some ideas, Cas, don't worry. We'll get out of here.”

* * *

He couldn't help it. Dean's optimism, misplaced though it might be, was infectious. He had known his brothers would come for him, but to have Dean _here_ , to feel safe at the hunter's side, did almost as much to relieve his pain as the immobilization of his broken arm. “What ideas?”

“Well,” Dean paused, obviously checking the floor for signs, then pulled them down a hallway. “Have to have a mortal soul, right? Do you think you could cross if you were sharing a body with a soul?”

Castiel frowned, confused. “Did you bring a soul?”

“No, I meant...I meant me, Cas. Could you, you know, hop on for a ride? I could bring your body through?”

A rush of affection filled his heart at the thought. Dean often expressed his disgust at the thought of possession, but it had been his first suggestion now. “I do not believe that would work,” he replied.

“We can always try it, right?”

“Dean...” Castiel shook his head. “This place...it was not meant for angels. I would not survive out of this vessel even for a moment.”

Dean was silent for a few moments. “That why you're not healing?”

Castiel gave a reluctant nod. “The spellwork on this place...I've never seen anything like it.”

“Well, that was just Plan D,” Dean admitted. “Got more we can try. Hey, I think this is it. Big archway, name at the top?”

Before Castiel could reply, Dean was lowering him to sit against the wall of the labyrinth's tunnel. “Dean?”

“I'm gonna check it out. See if there's a spell or something I can mess with.”

He could hear Dean pacing back and forth, muttering something under his breath. A few times the human would stop and dig through his pack before pacing again, but he didn't seem happy about what he'd found.

“Dean?”

“It's clear on the other side,” Dean called. “I think there's some stuff carved inside the gate, give me a minute.”

Castiel let his head rest back against the stone. His grace hadn't recovered from his attempt to smite the demon, not even to heal the most minor injuries. It was most likely the pressure of the labyrinth box, or perhaps a side effect of the demon's spell. He would most likely recover as soon as they were free...but every time his grace burned this low he wondered if this was the last time. If he was finally, permanently human.

“Cas?” Dean was approaching again, crouching down to be at Castiel's level even if they couldn't make eye contact. “You up for trying this? I think I messed up the sigil enough to pull you through.”

Castiel straightened with a groan, his short rest against the stone long enough to seize up the abused muscles in his body. He reached out for Dean and felt his arm guided around the hunter's broad shoulders.

“ _Angel!_ ”

Castiel jolted, mind racing, the stone vibrating beneath him. He heard Dean swear and felt the hunter's hands gingerly lifting him to his feet. “We gotta go _now_.”

“ _Where are you?_ ” The words echoed through air and stone, the demon's voice harsh and unforgiving.

Dean was pulling him through the gate, but there was still resistance. Castiel bit down on a cry of discomfort as the gate tried to push him out even as Dean hauled him through. It was like crawling through barbed wire; bits of the spell hooking into his essence to drag him back despite his friend's determination to drag him forward. He could feel the vibrations in the floor as the demon's steps drew closer, its full power unleashed in its fury.

“Son of a bitch, come on!” Dean practically pulled him off his feet, something overhead gave with an audible crack, and the demon's voice was silenced as Castiel sprawled painfully onto the smooth stone beyond the Gate of the Flesh.

“Finally!” Dean was on his feet again, and Castiel could hear him scratching at the stones with a piece of chalk. He lay on the floor, curled around his broken arm, fighting down the agony from the gate's attack on his being. It had not let him through easily, even with whatever disruption Dean had made to the spell, and it felt like whatever was left of his grace had been shredded by his passage through the gate.

“Cas?” Dean's hand was on his shoulder, carefully avoiding the break. “Cas, man, you okay?”

Castiel nodded jerkily. “What happened?”

“I drew over the sigil on the top stone on this side,” Dean explained as he eased Castiel up and off the floor. “I thought that would be enough, but the stone broke when we went through.”

“What?” he twisted toward Dean in shock. That gate was the only thing keeping the demon trapped in the labyrinth. At this moment, the spellwork...the _broken_ spellwork...was all that was between them and Shax.

“I tried to fix it, but I dunno, man. And I redrew the symbols on other stones on the arch, and put a devil's trap on the floor. Even if that bastard manages to get through the gate, he ain't getting farther.”

Castiel let Dean wrap an arm around his waist as he hooked his left arm over the human's shoulders, trying to fight back his own weakness. Despite the hunter's attempt at reassurance, he was worried. “We should keep moving. Where are we now?”

“It's just a corridor,” Dean replied. “Kinda like the maze back there, but everything is cleaner here. We got maybe a ten foot hallway before another arch.”

“Is it another gate?”

“Yeah, hang on...Gate of the Spirit. I think Sam had something about this.”

Castiel waited as Dean shifted him to one side to dig through his pack. There was a rustle of paper, then Dean grunted as he read something. “Gate of the Spirit...says it's a trial of temptation. Well, this'll be easy.”

“Dean,” Castiel sighed as the hunter tucked him close again to continue down the hall.

“What? Come on, Cas, what's temptation? If it's tempting me it'll be a hall full of strippers and booze. I can say no to that.”

Castiel didn't answer, not wanting to spark an argument now. The pain from his passage through the arch was receding, though his grace was still a tiny flicker in his core. Even now, his strength was flagging and his knees threatened to buckle, but they had to keep going. If the Gate of the Flesh was compromised it was possible Shax could break through as well, and they were nowhere near the exit to the labyrinth.

“Hey, at least it'll be something better to look at than this place,” Dean was saying. “Here we go!”

There was a tug on his essence as they stepped through the archway, a familiar sense of space folding around them as they entered the second gate. Castiel half-expected it to be just as Dean predicted, and for the air to be full of the throbbing music and heady scents of the iniquitous places his friend liked to frequent...but it was still and silent.

Dean was quiet, his breathing rapid it the angel's ear. “Cas?”

“What is it?” Castiel twisted his head around, trying to catch some sense of the space they had entered. “Dean, what is it?

“I think...I think we found where he stored all the artifacts.”

Castiel stumbled, trying to keep his hold on Dean with his left hand as the hunter took a step away from him. “Dean!”

“Just a sec,” Dean's voice sounded distant, distracted. “Son of a...it's one of those egg things, Cas. The one we used to pull Lucifer out of the president.”

“Dean!” Castiel made a grab for Dean's shoulder but the hunter had already slipped away. Unfortunately, Castiel was not yet strong enough on his own feet and he collapsed, landing heavily on his good arm, the impact rocking up through the broken arm strapped to his chest.

“Dammit, sorry, Cas,” Dean was back by his side, holding him up gently to let him regain his balance. “Hang on for just a second, okay? I'll just grab it and we'll get out of here.”

“No!” he managed to catch his friend's shirt this time. “Dean listen to me! This is your temptation!”

“What?” Dean snorted. “Come on, Cas. Since when is all this geek stuff my weak point?”

“You're seeing the tools and treasures that would allow you to protect those you love. Maybe to correct past misdeeds. I would see...” he swallowed and lowered his head, the words painful on his tongue. “I would see the tools to restore heaven, or...or my brethren's wings.”

Dean was silent for a moment. “Dammit, Cas,” he swore and tugged the angel close again, wrapping an arm around his waist to steady him on his feet. “Sorry, man. You're right.”

Then they were moving again, Dean's steps sure and purposeful. Castiel had to lean more and more of his weight on his friend, but Dean never wavered. “I'm glad you can't see it all, Cas,” Dean finally said after a few minutes of silence. “This stuff, man...it's incredible. It just seems...”

“I know.”

Dean was quiet again for a few more moments. “Hey, Cas...”

He heard the emotion in his friend's voice, and managed to tighten his left arm enough to approximate a hug. “I know, Dean.”

* * *

Dean let out a relieved sigh when they left the Gate of the Spirit behind. Cas was lagging, barely keeping to his feet, but by Dean's best guess (well, Sam's best guess) they weren't even halfway through. “Just a little bit farther, buddy,” he said, trying to heft Cas back up on his feet.

The angel raised his head, eyes still blank and unfocused. “Dean?”

“Same as before, about ten feet of nothing and then another gate,” Dean replied. He walked them toward the gate, squinting up at the top stone. “Gate of Fortitude. Sammy didn't say anything about that.”

Cas didn't answer. Dean didn't know if it was the wounds or the spells in this place...or maybe some combination...but he was worried. He was practically carrying the angel now, not just supporting him,

Fortitude. That was, what, strength of mind? He didn't have a dictionary for a brain like Sammy, but he was pretty sure it was a kind of strength that wasn't just physical.

“Here we go,” Dean murmured to Cas as they stepped through the archway...then froze.

There was that elevator-drop feeling of the world moving around them, then the area beyond the gate solidified into a long, dark passage of some kind—more like the bottom of a canyon than anything in the labyrinth. The walls were farther apart than in any of the other passages, and disappeared into a ceiling that was so high Dean couldn't see it through the darkness.

But what stopped him was the smell of sulfur...and the sound of the hounds.

He couldn't quite see them. Even in the labyrinth they were little more than suggestions of movement in the air, but he would never forget the _sound_. Baying and growling and digging at the ground beneath them....

“Dean?” Cas, barely keeping his head up, had turned in his direction.

“Cas...can't you hear it?”

Cas's face creased in confusion. “Hear what?”

“The...the hellhounds. Dammit, Cas, there are so many.”

“I don't hear anything,” Cas shook his head. “Dean what do you see?”

Dean swallowed and hitched Cas up a little higher. “It's a long, dark, I dunno, path or something. Not like the labyrinth. There must be dozens of 'em, all over the place, Cas, you can't hear them?”

Cas had his head tilted, listening, but he just shook his head again. “Nothing.”

Great. So either the spell was so bad that Cas was losing more of his powers...or the hounds weren't real. Dean steeled himself and took a slow step forward, angling Cas back so he was between the angel and the hellhounds. The nearest beast snapped and took a swipe at him, and Dean could feel a tug from its claws as it caught the edge of his sleeve.

“Nope, they're real. They're so real,” he muttered as he pushed Cas back toward the gate. No way they could get through this thing, not with so many hellhounds and Cas not able to fight. Dean glanced over at the angel, shrugging him a little higher. Cas was fighting to hold on, obviously at the end of whatever strength he had left.

Why weren't the hounds charging? Dean studied the room before them a little more closely, noticing that the hounds seemed unable to reach the gate at this end. Come to think of it...was that a narrow path through the middle? It couldn't be more than a few feet, just wide enough for the two of them, a narrow strip of the passage undisturbed by the hellhounds' agitated movements.

“Oh, you've got to be kidding me,” Dean complained.

“Dean?”

“Nothing, Cas, it's okay,” Dean shrugged Cas a little higher, tucking him in as close as he could. “Just hang on, man. We're gonna...we've gotta go.”

Cas seemed to rally, and the grip on Dean's shoulder tightened a little. Dean closed his eyes for a moment, but there was nothing to pray to here. Not when the only one who'd ever really listened was right beside him. He took a slow, measured step into the path. One of the hounds lunged and snapped at him, but Dean forced himself to stand still and not flinch into the hounds waiting on the other side of the path. They were growling, lunging, swiping, but just as he'd thought they couldn't quite reach Dean and Castiel in the center of the path.

Step by painful step, nothing but the archway in the far side of the room to guide them, Dean worked his way down the path through the snarling mass of hellhounds. If he veered off course even a step, claws snatched at their clothing.

Cas stumbled, his legs finally giving out on him. Dean swore and half-fell on top of the angel, scrambling away from the edge of the path as wicked claws hooked into the cuff of his pants. “Dammit! Cas, you okay?”

The angel didn't answer. Dean bent over him, cradling his head and shoulders, trying to see Cas's face in the dim light. He seemed to be unconscious, the bruises on his face standing out in stark relief to the pale skin beneath. Dean rested one hand on his friend's chest, and relaxed just a little when he felt Cas take in a shallow breath.

But they couldn't stay there long. The sheer noise of the hounds was deafening, wearing away at the last bit of control Dean had over his own terror. He glanced back down the path desperately, then up to the next archway. They weren't quite halfway through the room, but some sort of shadow had fallen over the path behind them so he couldn't quite make out how to get back to the last passage.

“Screw this,” Dean muttered. He stood up and hauled Cas into his arms, bridal style. His back and knees screamed at him for this, but he forced himself to move forward anyway. His world had narrowed down to the path in front of his feet and the brother in his arms. The hellhounds on either side snapped and growled but Dean kept his eyes on the next archway.

One step at a time, it drew closer and closer. The baying of the hounds grew until it was a solid, roaring noise in his ears, but finally they were through the archway. The world shifted around them, the sound of the hellhounds cut off, and the darkness of the passage receded into the simple stone walls of the labyrinth.

Dean half-collapsed, gently sliding Castiel to the ground before dropping to sit against the wall. He drew his knees up and rested his head against the wall, trying to slow his breathing to a normal rate. He looked down at Cas and gently patted the angel on his uninjured shoulder.

“Five minutes,” he rasped, closing his eyes and fumbling for his hip flask, even though Cas couldn't answer right now. “Just five minutes, man.”

* * *

“ _Cas? Come on, buddy, we've gotta get moving._ ”

Castiel let out a groan, which quickly turned into a whimper as his body protested any movement. “Dean?”

“Right here,” the hunter's hand was warm on his shoulder. “We're through the Gate of Fortitude.”

Something sounded wrong in Dean's voice. “You all right?” Castiel whispered as he let his friend pull him up to sit against the wall.

Dean gave a shaky laugh. “You're the one playing sleeping beauty here, not me.”

“Dean...”

“I'm fine. That was just a little...I'm fine, Cas.”

Castiel fell silent and slowly moved his stiffened limbs. His right arm was still bound to his chest, though something had shifted and the angle was more painful now. “I'm still injured.”

He hadn't meant to say that out loud, but Dean snorted. “You were out for like ten minutes. Don't think that's long enough for anything in here.”

He had to agree with that. “And the next gate?”

“Sammy thinks there's five of them,” Dean began, lifting Castiel to his feet and taking his usual place at his side to support him. “We've been through three, so we're almost done.”

“How did he come to that number?” Castiel asked. His flagging strength had rallied a bit, and he could feel that the speck of grace at the core of his essence was stronger.

“That panel in the crypt, had some kinda poem on the back. It talked about five sacred riddles, I think that's gotta be these gates, or challenges, or whatever.”

“And the fourth gate?”

Dean whistled, pulling them both to a stop. “Damn, Cas, I wish you could see this. It's not like the others, it's like something out of an old tomb or something.”

“Dean?”

“It's, uh...The Gate of Wisdom. There's some kind of hieroglyphics on here, I can't make them out.”

“What kind of letters?” Castiel asked. He could understand most human languages, though the idioms sometimes escaped him.

“I just told you, man, I can't read it.”

“No, Dean,” Castiel shook his head, then regretted it when a rush of dizziness tried to overwhelm his remaining senses. “You said it was like a tomb, are the letters written or carved?”

“Oh, I gotcha,” Dean shuffled them forward a few steps, and Castiel heard the man's hands brush over the wall in front of them. “They're raised. You think you can read them by touch?”

“I'll try,” Castiel replied. He let Dean maneuver them around so that the hunter was still supporting most of his weight while he felt out the letters on the wall. “It's Aramaic,” he explained, twisting his head around to speak to Dean. “It's a story of some kind.”

“Yeah?”

Castiel nodded. He traced his fingers over the letters, trying to put the story into words Dean could understand. “It talks about a wise king who had two women brought to him one day. A wealthy woman and her slave. They had both born sons recently, but one had perished in the night. The wealthy woman claimed it was the slave's son who had perished, and that the slave had switched the infants, but the slave woman claimed the same of the wealthy woman.

“They had come to the king for justice, as neither the infants' fathers nor the midwives who had birthed them could determine which woman's son had perished and which had survived. The story says the ambitious king would assign the infant to the wealthy woman to secure his place among the elite, but the compassionate king would give the baby to the slave as her son would be her only comfort.”

“Sounds about right,” Dean interrupted. “So what?”

Castiel rested his hand on the center of the panel, where a relief of an infant between the figures of two women had been carved. “The final line asks what the wise king would do. I suppose we must answer that question for the gate to open.”

“Oh, that's easy,” Dean said with a laugh. “Cut the baby in half.”

He would have whirled around to stare at his friend in horror, had he been capable. “Dean!”

“What? It's, like, the only Bible story I remember. Two chicks asked the king what to do because they were fighting over a baby. He said cut it in half, and the baby's real mother gave him up so he wouldn't be hurt.”

“But, Dean, why would any woman wish ill on an innocent infant?” Castiel protested. “Or what if they both were malicious and agreed to let him die?”

“It's just a story, Cas,” Dean replied. There was a faint ringing of metal as Dean drew out an angel blade. “So. Cut the baby in half.”

Celestial steel rang on stone as Dean struck the wall, doubtlessly cutting through the carved relief of the infant. Castiel leaned against his friend, still stunned at the implications of such an answer, but there was a puff of air and the scraping of stone as the fourth gate opened.

“Okay, this one isn't a hallway,” Dean explained as he helped Castiel into the next section of the labyrinth. “It looks like...it's just a room. There's some kind of rune on the floor or something, but that's it.”

Castiel began to ask Dean to describe the rune, when the door slammed closed behind them. He felt Dean stiffen and tuck him closer, as though there was a sudden danger. “Dean?”

“It's dark. Like all the lights went out...hang on, there's something...something's glowing.”

The silence grew between them, and Castiel thought he could hear the whisper of distant voices in the air. “What's happening?”

“It's another question,” Dean replied, bewildered. “Maybe there's more than one part of the Gate of Wisdom. It just says, 'What is the hardest thing in the world?'”

Dean shifted them around. “The hardest thing...what, like a diamond?”

“Dean,” Castiel tried to tug his friend forward. “Let me see the rune.”

“But you can't,” Dean began, then cut himself off. “Right, right. Yeah, it's cut into the floor.”

Dean slowly lowered him to kneel on the floor, and Castiel ran his fingers over the familiar carving. It was just as he expected. “It's the Gate of Humility,” he said softly.

“So what, humility is the hardest thing?” Dean asked. He was kneeling beside him, still close in case Castiel needed assistance. “I mean, I guess that's true.”

“No. The hardest thing...is admitting you were wrong.”

The hunter was silent for a moment. “Shit,” he finally said. “How is that both corny and deep at the same time?”

“It's a riddle,” Castiel explained. He rested his hand on the rune, pleased to find that it was growing warm under his hand. “You have to admit a wrongdoing, something you are truly repentant for.”

Dean's hand joined his on the rune. “So like, not putting Nair in Sammy's shampoo?”

“Like destroying Heaven.”

“Cas,” Dean's free arm wrapped around his shoulders. “Come on, man. That wasn't your fault.”

“My fault or not, it was my actions. It was my pride.”

The hunter sighed. He was quiet for a few moments, as though working up the courage to speak. “Mine too,” he finally said. “I always thought...maybe if I'd just listened to you that day, if I hadn't been an asshole...maybe you wouldn't have gone off with Metadouche. Maybe we could have, I don't know, worked out what he was planning.”

“It wasn't your fault, Dean,” Castiel replied.

“Yeah, well, it was...how did you say it? My pride? I just got so damn angry I couldn't see past what I was feeling, and then you were gone and Sammy had the trials, and everything just went to hell after that. The last few years, man...I don't know why you stick around.”

The rune beneath their hands let out a soft note, and the warmth seemed to travel up Castiel's arm. “Dean?”

“I see it,” Dean's arm tightened around Castiel's shoulders. “Let's go home.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hopefully the next chapter won't take so long.
> 
> (PS: the blade through the arm was for you, LugiaDepression, I know it's your favorite ;D)


	3. To trap this spirit of iniquity

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm so sorry! I've been sick since like the end of April, even in quarantine for a week because my symptoms lined up with Covid (though the test was negative and at least I'm only running a fever 5% of the time now). We still don't fully know what's wrong as my sinuses are still giving me trouble. I'm trying to finish this in a reasonable time, so please excuse me if the next chapter ends up being a little short. I have had to take time off from writing just for my physical and mental health, but I might be getting better, finally.
> 
> And I'm sorry for something else, but um. You'll see.

The box sat innocently on a table in the infirmary. Sam had dropped it there—careful to avoid triggering the trap again—as he prepared for whatever injuries the other two might bring back (after all, when had Dean and Cas ever returned from something with both of them unscathed?).

But really, all he had left to do was wait.

Dean had only been gone a few hours but the time seemed to stretch out endlessly. Sam had prepped the infirmary, gone back over the lore three times, and packed his own gear just in case Dean never made it back...but there was still nothing from the box. He was reluctant to leave the box just in case they reappeared and needed help, and carrying it from room to room would only increase the chance that Sam himself would get trapped inside.

So he waited.

With a sigh, Sam tore his gaze from the lacquered box to flip through the journal one more time. He could almost recite some of the entries from memory now, and he was starting to hate the sheer admiration the author of the journal had for the disciple of Solomon.

The lights in the infirmary flickered, then dimmed. Sam looked up, chin still propped up on one hand, and frowned at the overhead lights for a second before they flickered again and the bulb in one exploded. He stood up quickly, knocking his chair over, research materials forgotten on the table as the lacquered box began to glow.

It wasn't like the last two times, when Cas and Dean had been sucked inside. The box shuddered on the table, sliding a few inches to one side. The glow pulsed out from the box to bathe the infirmary in golden light as another bulb in the room exploded.

An alarm sounded deep in the bunker and the overhead lights cut off, replaced by the red emergency lights along the tops of the walls. The box gave a final shake and the top flipped open on unseen hinges, then the golden light exploded out with a physical force that blew Sam back and forced him to shield his eyes with one arm.

He heard something large hit the floor, followed by the softer sound of the lid of the lacquered box falling back in to place. Then the golden light was gone, the infirmary lit only by the red emergency lighting.

Sam lowered his arm, blinking away the spots in his vision. Dean was sprawled across the floor of the infirmary, flat on his back, with Cas on top of him. Sam quickly slapped the emergency cut-off on the wall to bring the lights back up and hurried to his brother's side.

“Dean? Cas?” Sam slid to his knees, realizing with concern that Cas wasn't just lying on top of Dean, that Dean had both arms wrapped around the angel as though to cushion him from the landing. “Oh my god...”

He didn't even know where to start. Cas's shirt was torn and bloody, and what little Sam could see of his face looked just as damaged. He tried to gingerly pry his brother's arms away, but Dean suddenly snapped to awareness with a snarl and rolled away from Sam to shield Cas with his own body. “Touch him again and I'll rip your spine out, you son of a bitch!”

“Whoa, easy!” Sam leaned back, holding his hands up. “Dean, it's me. You made it back. It's Sam.”

Dean's head whipped around, though by the way the older Winchester groaned and sagged back to the floor it was clear the transition out of the box hadn't been easy. “Sammy?”

“Right here,” Sam gently helped Dean roll onto his back, scanning his older brother for obvious injuries. “What the hell happened, man?”

“Demon.” Dean spat the word out. He only then seemed to notice his death-grip on Cas and let his arms fall away. “Buckets of crazy. Worked Cas over pretty good.”

Sam's gut twisted. Cas's shirt was soaked in blood, dark and tacky in some places and slick and red in others. He seemed to be unconscious against Dean's chest, and when Sam leaned down to try to get a look at Cas's face he noticed a trickle of blood on his upper lip. “I think his nose is bleeding.”

“Pretty sure it's busted,” Dean grunted. The older Winchester rubbed one hand across his eyes and blinked around in the dim light, finally realizing where Sam had moved the box. “Infirmary?”

Sam shrugged. “One of you always seems to need it.”

Dean flailed and managed to pat Sam on the arm, though he nearly caught his brother across the ear instead. “Good thinking. Help me get him on a bed.”

Sam slid one arm under Cas to pull him up so that Dean could scramble out from under him, and didn't miss the way Cas shifted and moaned at the touch. “I think he's waking up.”

With a muffled curse Dean pulled himself free and up onto his knees. “His back's a mess, put him on his side.”

And his right arm was bandaged up, Sam noticed. He barely noticed Dean stripping off his flannel shirt to bunch under Castiel's head before helping Sam lower him back down. “Dude, we have pillows.”

“Just give him a second.”

There was something else in Dean's voice. Something else was wrong, something that wasn't obvious. Sam studied his brother for a moment, but all of Dean's focus was on the angel in front of them. “Dean?”

“Cas?” Dean was ignoring him, which was mildly infuriating. “You with us, buddy?” Dean rested one hand on Cas's neck, gently turning the angel's face toward him.

Cas gave another moan and his eyes slowly fluttered open. Sam waited, fully expecting one of those intense eye contact things between his brother and the angel, but Cas's eyes never seemed to focus. He seemed to be staring at a point just beyond Dean's head, even though the hunter was speaking to him.

Dean's shoulders slumped and he let his head fall forward. “Sorry, man.”

“Sorry? What is it?” Sam looked between them, from Cas's blank eyes to Dean's devastated expression. “Cas?”

“He's blind,” Dean answered. “Some kind of spell...kinda hoped getting out of that damn box would break it.”

Sam winced in sympathy. He'd read up on Shax, too, but hadn't realized the demon's powers would be strong enough to affect an angel. “We have an entire shelf of grimoires on breaking curses,” he offered, trying to bolster the other two's spirits. “There's gotta be something there.”

“Yeah,” Dean let out a sigh. “All right, Cas, you with us?”

The angel grunted and lifted his head off the floor enough to glare vaguely in Dean's direction. “Where else...would I be?” he rasped.

“Monaco,” Dean quipped. “Casinos and exotic women. Come on, let's get you on the bed.”

“Here,” Sam leaped up to tug the sheets back on one of the beds closer to the door. “Some of the bulbs are out, but the light's still good here.”

Dean grunted. He'd gotten one arm under Cas and let the angel wrap his free arm around his shoulders, before gently lifting him to his feet. “They can detect every werewolf in the country but can't invent a non-exploding light bulb,” he complained as he walked Cas the few feet to the bed.

Sam didn't really have a reply for that, too busy with wheeling one of the trays of medical supplies over to the bed. He didn't miss how Cas seemed able to track their movements throughout the room—Dean turning to a sink to splash water on his face, Sam moving around the room to gather supplies.

While he would have loved to investigate, to see if their friend had other senses that could compensate for his lack of sight, Sam couldn't miss how vulnerable and exhausted Cas looked slumped on the infirmary bed. He wheeled the tray closer to Cas and hesitated, wondering where even to start. Cas's arm, tied to his chest by a few loops of bandage, looked swollen and the sleeve was stained with blood. His face was bruised and bloody, and he was hunched over as though it was painful to sit up straight.

“Cas?” Starting with the easiest, Sam knelt up on the bed next to him and selected a piece of gauze and some antiseptic. “I'm gonna clean your face, all right?”

He waited for the angel's nod of understanding before starting to sponge away the dirt and dried blood. Up close, he could see that the wounds on Cas's face really did look worse than they actually were, with the broken nose and a wound on the side of his head being the worst. Head wounds always bled like crazy anyway, which hadn't helped Cas's ghoulish appearance.

“Here we go,” Dean wheeled up a second tray, one of the ones that could extend over a bed, and before Sam could question him on it the older Winchester had arranged a folded blanket on the top of the tray and slid it into place at Cas's side. “All right, man. Blanket on your right, about elbow-high, I'm gonna cut your arm loose and we can lay it out on that, okay?”

Cas leaned away from Sam for a moment and awkwardly felt out the position of the tray with his good hand. He nodded in satisfaction as Dean began to cut away the bandages strapping his arm to his chest. “The break should heal by morning,” he said, exhaustion heavy in his voice.

Dean snorted as he gently lowered Cas's arm to rest on the tray. “Dude, we don't even know what time it is now.”

“It is nine thirty-seven in the evening, according to your local time zone.”

The older Winchester shook his head, still focused on removing the bandages that were wrapped around Cas's chest. Sam frowned and peeked at his watch. “He's, uh...he's right, Dean.”

“What?” Dean's head came back up from cutting the scraps of Cas's sleeve away. “Shut up.”

“The loss of my sight doesn't lessen my other senses,” Cas explained as Sam gently turned his head to clean the other side of his face. “Although many aspects of time are uniquely human constructs, they are not difficult to measure.”

Sam filed that away in his mental list of things to ask Cas about when this was over. He dropped the bloody gauze he'd been using to clean Cas's face into a waste bin on the tray and picked up a couple of butterfly strips to close the wound on his cheek. There wasn't much else to do there, since Cas's nose had been set and the rest of the injuries on his face were bruises.

“Sammy?” Dean was holding out a scrap of fabric, and Sam obligingly held out the waste bin for Dean to drop the shreds of Cas's sleeve in. “Damn, I think these are spiral breaks.”

With a grimace of sympathy, Sam picked up another pair of scissors to cut through Cas's other sleeve up to his collar. The angel's shirt was already ruined, best to just get it off of him now. “What happened?” he asked softly. Cas turned toward him, blank eyes focusing somewhere behind Sam's left ear.

“I was overpowered.”

“ _Buckets_ of crazy,” Dean repeated, lobbing another scrap of sleeve into the bin.

Sam stared at Cas's arm, worrying his lip between his teeth. “I don't think we can set a spiral break here,” he finally said.

“Yeah,” Dean sighed. “Sorry, man.”

“Can you still heal it?” Sam found himself asking. Spiral breaks were nasty and usually needed heavy-duty surgery, definitely not the sort of thing a couple of hunters should be tackling.

Castiel had nodded again, his face pinched and tired. “If the rest of my injuries are treated,” he said wearily. “I apologize. It would seem my grace has not fully returned.”

“Don't even start,” Dean warned. There was a tightness in his face...like whatever state he'd found Cas in had left him shaken. “I'm gonna work on your elbow, just tell me if you need a break.”

Sam ducked his head and gently cut through the shoulders of Cas's shirt to pull it away. He hadn't even noticed the shreds of Cas's tie around his wrists before, the skin beneath mottled with bruises. Now he could see that the angel's chest and stomach were also bruised, scattered patterns left behind by something blunt, not breaking the skin like a whip would have. “What...” he began.

“Belt,” Dean interrupted. He had taken a suture kit off Sam's tray and was gently closing a ragged tear in Cas's elbow, the even stitches slowly pulling the skin back together over the grace shining through the wound. An angel blade wound, like the one Sam could see in Cas's side.

He glanced down when Dean spoke and noticed Cas's belt was gone, and his stomach dropped even further. Overpowered, captured, then restrained and tortured with simple items he'd been wearing. Sam had never thought about someone using the angel's own clothing against him, beyond Dean's jokes about trench coats getting sucked into jet engines back when Cas still had wings.

“Dammit, this one goes straight through,” Dean muttered. Sam glanced up to see him gently rotate Cas's arm, making the angel shudder and bite back a groan of pain.

“Hey, it's okay,” Sam said, rubbing Cas's good arm. “Want me to get something for the pain?”

Cas shook his head. “Just hurry.”

Sam swallowed and grabbed up another handful of gauze to press against the wound in his friend's side. Castiel gave another strangled noise and curled forward, his free hand coming up behind Sam to twist his fingers into the back of Sam's shirt.

“That's it,” Dean announced a moment later, cutting the line of the suture. “Just gonna wrap it, okay?”

The angel nodded. Sam wordlessly shifted closer to provide more support for his friend, darting a peek over Cas's shoulder to find an uninjured place to rest his hand.

He felt sick. Cas's back was crisscrossed with four or five slashes that were overlaid with bruises from blows that had torn the skin even further. The cuts themselves looked shallow, but trickling the sparks of grace he'd come to expect from angel blade wounds.

“We'll get you a sling once we're done,” Dean was saying. “Rest that arm for a little while.”

Cas sighed, and even though he'd been beaten bloody and was currently being pieced back together by the brothers a little of the old, impervious Castiel seemed to come through. “I told you it would be healed by morning.”

“Yeah, well, humor me,” Dean retorted. “Arm in a sling, feet up in bed, Sharknado marathon, the works, okay?”

Sam couldn't quite hold back a snort of laughter. Dean was obviously trying to distract Cas from having his broken arm manipulated. He wasn't sure if it was working or if Cas was humoring them, but the angel fell silent and let his body slump a little further against Sam's.

“How's that one looking?” Dean asked, tying off the bandage he'd been wrapping around Cas's arm and gently laying the arm back down on the folded towel.

Sam pulled the folded gauze away and frowned at fresh blood staining it. “I think this one needs stitching, too.”

Dean sighed and wiped the back of his hand across his forehead. His hands were shaking, Sam realized. Whatever they had gone through had been bad enough to shake his big brother. “My turn,” he announced. “Here, swap with me.”

With an almost imperceptible sigh of relief Dean took Sam's place next to Cas. Sam hadn't gotten a good look at the stab wound in Cas's arm, but the one in his side was ragged and uneven. The blade had been twisted or pulled out roughly, or both.

Sam wheeled one of the stools around to sit in front of Cas and grabbed up another set of sutures to gently begin stitching the flesh back together. He'd sewn up worse wounds on his father and brother, and even with the blue-white sparks of Cas's grace trickling out with the blood it was still familiar work. “What do we do with the box?” he finally asked.

He felt Cas sigh, but it was Dean who answered. “We got any of Bobby's cursed boxes?” he asked. He was still sitting close enough to steady Cas, but had turned on the bed so that he could tend to the wounds on the angel's back.

“I don't think so,” Sam frowned and tied off the first suture. “I have the instructions for making one, though. If we get a wooden crate we can burn the symbols into it, that would be the easiest way. There's an Etsy shop that sells crates made of old sea wood, salt water would have been soaking into the wood for years before...” he trailed off at the sudden, heavy silence and looked up into Dean's flat stare.

“Etsy. Wow, Sam,” the older Winchester commented. “Looking for scented candles and doilies?”

“Shut up, Dean,” Sam shook his head. “It would work. The salt in the wood would boost the sigils' power. It would take a couple days, but we could make one.” Besides, after the whole Prometheus thing he'd started looking at less conventional sources for spell ingredients. Turned out maybe the internet was a hunter's best friend after all, even if he had to hide the invoices from Dean.

“I think we can just wrap your back,” Dean said after Sam finished tying off the sutures. “They're bad, but not deep.”

“Yellow salve on the tray,” Sam nodded at the palm-sized pot in question. “That stuff for bruises Garth sent us.”

Dean didn't argue—or make a comment on the pleasant pine scent, or complain about rubbing lotion on a dude. Just scooped some of the salve out with his fingers and passed the container on to Sam.

They worked together in silence for a few minutes—Dean treating the bruises on Cas's back while Sam focused on the ones on his front and face. The salve was thick and slightly greasy, but would numb the pain and increase circulation in the skin to help repair damaged blood vessels.

“Right,” Dean slid away from Cas and absently wiped his greasy fingers on Sam's shirt. “Got those bandages?”

Sam rolled his eyes and tossed a roll of bandages at Dean's face, turning his face to hide the grin when his brother fumbled the catch and nearly dropped the roll on the floor. “Bitch,” Dean said, almost on reflex. “All right, Cas, it's mummy time.”

Castiel angled his head toward Dean, eyebrows arching in a familiar display of puzzlement. “Don't tell Mary,” he pleaded. “If Jack knows he'll only worry unnecessarily.”

Sam didn't know whether to laugh or cry at that. On one hand, he was fairly certain Cas was only winding Dean up by pretending the older Winchester was talking about calling their _mother_ rather than wrapping Cas up in bandages. On the other, saying Jack would worry _unnecessarily_ was a little heartbreaking.

Would they ever convince Castiel of his worth to their family?

“Yeah, yeah, c'mon, Imhotep,” Dean rolled his eyes. Sam stepped back and let his brother work, biting back his own laugh as Cas complained that the representation of ancient Egypt in the _Mummy_ movies was completely inaccurate.

Sam busied himself with disposing of the trash and putting the rest of the supplies away as Dean finished wrapping the bandages around Cas. Sam had brought a thermos of coffee down while he was waiting for Cas and Dean to come back, and was relieved to find there was still enough coffee for one or two cups left inside. He swallowed down a mouthful, grimaced at the cold brew, and decided he could spare the time to make a fresh pot before diving into the computer index of the bunker's resources.

“All right, feet up, hotshot.” Dean had tied off the last of the bandage and found a sling to support Cas's broken arm. “Time for an angel nap.”

To his credit, Cas didn't complain and merely sank into the infirmary bed with a sigh of relief. “Thank you Dean...Sam.”

Sam nodded, forgetting for a moment that Cas couldn't see him. “Just get some sleep, Cas.”

Dean let out a heavy sigh and tugged the rough infirmary blanket up to Cas's chest The angel was lying on what could charitably be called his good side, with his broken arm tucked up against his body. “We'll be here when you wake up.”

Sam watched his brother for a moment, seeing the broad shoulders relax almost imperceptibly when Cas slipped off into sleep. “Dude, you should get some rest, too.”

“Hmm? No, I'm fine,” Dean shook his head and ran one hand through his short hair. “Spell-breaking books, right?”

“They'll still be here in a couple of hours,” Sam argued. “Look...grab one of the beds in here. I'm gonna be going through the database for a while just getting titles and reference locations anyway.”

Dean glanced at the next bed over, hesitant, then shook his head again. “No, no, I'm fine.”

“Your hands are shaking,” Sam countered. “C'mon, Dean. The index is digital now, it's not like we need both of us looking right away. Get some rest and I'll wake you up once we have something.”

For a moment it looked like Dean was going to refuse. The older Winchester was staring at the floor, arms folded, shoulders set. Then he almost seemed to slump in on himself as he brought a hand up to rub across his face. “The second you find something you get me,” Dean said, pointing at Sam.

Sam held his hands up. “Promise.”

Dean snorted and shook his head. “Yeah, yeah.” He stripped off his jacket and boots and stretched out on the infirmary bed next to Cas's, not even bothering with pulling the blanket over himself. “Get those light bulbs changed while you're at it.”

Picking up the thermos of cold coffee, Sam had to bite back a laugh at that. “I'll get right on it. Just get some sleep. Jerk.”

* * *

Castiel was lost. Trapped in dreams of darkness and heat, his arms immobile, some great force twisting around his legs to pin him down.

“Whoa, hey, it's okay.”

A gentle hand on his side pressed him down, while something cool and wet was wiped across his forehead. Castiel struggled to open his eyes, finding only darkness before him. He had hoped further rest would give his grace time to break the spell, but there was no change.

“Cas? You're running a fever. If you can sit up, I'll check if anything looks infected,” Sam continued. The hunter was practically hovering over him, worry radiating out from his soul like the first light of sunrise.

With Sam's help, Castiel managed to sit up enough that the younger Winchester could check his wounds. They felt raw, inflamed, but that was a common enough side effect of angel blade wounds. “Dean?” he managed to ask as Sam gingerly peeled back the bandaging on Castiel's elbow.

“I think he's still asleep,” Sam replied. “You've both been out for about two hours. I've started a list of reference books to check, but it's not much to go on.”

Castiel nodded as Sam gently straightened the sling that kept his right arm immobile. “A solution would most likely be in the oldest volumes,” he began, sliding off the bed, but Sam's hand on his chest stopped him.

“You need rest,” Sam said. “There's not much you can do, it's just reading stuff on the computer.”

He could tell by the sudden stiffness in Sam's posture that the human realized he'd misspoken. “Look, Cas, I didn't mean...”

“There are grimoires written in braille in the library,” Castiel interrupted, pushing his friend's hand aside. He refused to pity himself for his current situation. He was not the first being in the history of the universe to be bereft of sight, and he would not be the last. “Many of those have not been properly archived and would not be in your electronic index.”

“I'm sorry, man, I didn't mean that.” Sam said, his voice was tinged with sorrow and guilt. “It's just...I'm still just making a list of what to even start with. I promised Dean I'd wake him up when it was time to hit the books, and we'll need your help then to go over what we're finding.”

It was an obvious ploy to mollify Castiel and keep him in the infirmary, but he let himself be guided back onto the bed. “What have you found so far?”

“Not much,” Sam let out a sigh. “I started with the digitized manuscripts, trying to check the older stuff like you said. There's a lot of false information, unfortunately. Some of the old curse-breaking spells were actually remedies for common illnesses.”

That made sense. It had taken humanity centuries to understand the science of their own bodies, so a primitive treatment for a common ailment could very well have been considered a counter-curse.

He realized Sam had been silent for a few minutes. “Sam?”

“I'm sorry, Cas,” the younger Winchester finally said after another few seconds of quiet. “There may not...what if we don't find anything?”

He had already considered that. This was a curse, not an injury to his human vessel or true form, so there was very little chance it would be permanent. And if it was...well, he'd learned to function without his wings. The loss of physical sight was a relatively small matter compared to the loss of ethereal flight.

“I'm so sorry,” Sam repeated. His voice was breaking with emotion, and Castiel turned his face toward his friend, feeling the sorrow and guilt roll off of his soul in waves. “This is all my fault, Cas.”

“No, Sam,” Castiel shifted on the bed, wishing Sam were close enough that he could reach out to touch the hunter. Humans often craved physical contact when they were distressed, but he feared climbing back out of bed would just distress his friend even more. “It was an accident. We didn't expect the box to behave in that way.”

“But if I'd just put it down,” Sam continued, anguished. “God, Cas...if I'd just been listening when you were trying to call me, if I'd just put that damn box down, this wouldn't be happening. You wouldn't be blind, that demon wouldn't have hurt you...”

“Sam.” Castiel did reach out now, and to his relief the hunter crossed the room to take his hand. “It wasn't your fault.”

“I opened the box.”

“No, Sam. The spell opened the box. That box was bespelled to tempt whoever held it to desire its contents,” he said, squeezing Sam's cold fingers. “It was made to trap an ancient, powerful demon. You could not have resisted it.”

“Dean did.”

“After he knew about the spell,” Castiel explained. Sam had released his hand, so he tucked it back against his side. “If he had touched it first in the crypt he would have been enchanted as you were.”

He heard the slight whisper of Sam's hair as the hunter shook his head. “It still should have been me,” Sam whispered.

“No.” Castiel closed his useless eyes, shifting against the pull of the bandages against the slashes in his back. “Do not take this on yourself, Sam.”

Silence fell between them for a few more minutes, the faint noises of the bunker nearly lulling Castiel back to sleep. Then he heard Sam let out another sigh, and the rustle of fabric as the young hunter moved away. “Try to get some more rest, Cas,” Sam said. “I'm just gonna stretch my legs, clear my head a little.”

Castiel let his body relax deeper into the bed as Sam's footsteps echoed down the hall away from the infirmary. This wouldn't be the end of it, he knew. The brothers both carried far more than their share of undeserved guilt, though he would have done anything to spare his friend this.

His thoughts were slowing, and with a final sigh he let the ache of his wounds and the heat of the fever pull him back down into the dark spiral of sleep.

* * *

“...and that was it. After everything, some bullshit fortune cookie riddle was the last gate.”

Sam, focusing on the coffee in his hands, just nodded as Dean finished describing the journey out of the lacquered box. “What about Shax?”

Dean popped the cap off a bottle of beer before sitting down opposite Sam at the library table. “I never saw him after...after I shot him,” he replied, lifting the bottle to take a swig. It was only half-past eight in the morning, but Sam didn't have the heart to scold his brother for hitting the beer right away. The last four hours had been terrible for all of them.

“Well, I'm only asking because when you first, you know, popped out of the box, you said something. You were warning someone not to touch Cas.”

Dean was silent for a few seconds, then he let out a sigh and scrubbed one hand over his face. “The box was screwing with Cas's mojo. I don't care how strong that bastard was, he shouldn't have taken Cas out so easily. When we got to the last gate...I don't know, it was like the box didn't want to let him go.”

He ducked his head, then abruptly stood back up and turned away from the table. Sam waited, knowing his brother sometimes had to work through things in his head before he could explain them.

“He was slipping away from me,” Dean finally said. “I thought...I thought maybe Shax had gotten loose, maybe he had a hold of Cas. I don't know, maybe it was just the box. I just grabbed on as tight as I could.”

Sam knew Dean was thinking of another time Cas had been pulled away from him. When Cas had stayed behind in Purgatory under some illusion of penance, only to be ripped back out and brainwashed by Naomi.

“Well, there has to be a way to break the spell,” Sam said, breaking the silence. “I tried Rowena, but she said something about Russia and that she'd be back in two weeks, then the line went dead. She did say that no spell is infallible, so there has to be something.”

Dean heaved out a sigh and dropped back into his chair. “Maybe I should just go back in and gank that son of a bitch.”

“That's not a good...”

“No, Dean!”

Startled, Sam and Dean turned, almost in tandem, toward the new voice that came from the library's doorway.

Cas was there. He'd discarded the sling and found a replacement dress shirt somewhere (or repaired the old one, though Sam suspected this was just one of Dean's as the older Winchester was about the same size as Cas these days). He'd buttoned it up but not tucked it in, and his face was pale and drawn from pain as he slowly made his way toward the table.

“Dammit, why are you out of bed?” Dean demanded, shoving his chair back to hurry to Cas's side. He reached out for the angel's left arm, probably to guide him to a chair, but Cas jerked his arm away before Dean could touch it and leveled something close to his normal glare in Dean's general direction.

“I am not helpless, Dean,” Cas said. His voice was tight with pain and frustration, but he simply stepped around Dean, reached out with one hand to find the table top, and gingerly walked along the length of the table until he located a chair a few spaces away from Sam's. “Have you found anything?” he asked, sinking into the chair with obvious relief.

Sam glanced from his brother to the angel and back before clearing his throat. “Nothing much, Cas. But we've really only started to look.”

Dean had retaken his seat without another word, and was staring down at his beer bottle with a sulky expression. Sam wanted to roll his eyes, but this really wasn't the time. The two of them could sort out whatever drama they had later—they really did need all the help they could get with breaking this curse.

“Did you find the braille grimoires?” Cas asked.

“You can read braille?” Dean's head came up as Sam slid a heavy volume toward Cas. “Dude, whatever happened to taking it easy?”

“I would prefer to...'take it easy'...after the curse is broken.”

“Yeah, but you could have called,” Dean shook his head. “You didn't have to walk up here by yourself, man.”

Cas let out an exasperated sigh. “I don't need your help to walk through the bunker.”

“C'mon, Cas, you can't see.”

“Yes, Dean,” Cas slammed the grimoire he was holding closed and shoved it to one side, head angled toward Dean's chair. “I am well aware of my limitations.”

“Coulda fooled me!” Dean threw his hands up in the air in exasperation. “Dammit, Cas, I had to peel you off the floor twelve hours ago!”

“Dean!” Sam lunged across the table to grab a handful of his brother's shirt as Dean was about to rise from his chair. “Cool it, man. This isn't the time.”

Dean tugged his arm away and ran a hand through his hair, looking away from the table with a shake of his head. “I'm going for a drive,” he announced. He pushed himself up, then turned around to point at Sam. “Keep an eye on him.”

Sam nodded, a little relieved that Dean was leaving. His brother and Cas were too much alike for their own good sometimes, and when they started lashing out at each other because of worry or fear or frustration it could lead to some truly horrible arguments.

He heard a sigh from down the table and turned to find Cas leaning forward, head in his hands. “You okay?” he asked, worry rising when he thought Dean might have been right to want to escort Cas right back to bed.

“I'm sorry, Sam,” Cas said. He let his hands drop to the table and gently ran the tips of his fingers across an old scar in the wood. “Your brother...he was trying to help.”

“Well, Dean kinda sucks at that kind of thing,” Sam offered. He got up from the table himself to pour a cup of coffee for his friend and retrieve the rest of the stack of braille grimoire. They hadn't been cataloged with the rest, possibly because the old Men of Letters hadn't thought they were important. “I didn't even know these were here,” he commented, trying to lighten the mood of the room.

“There was a school for the blind in 1887,” Cas said. He accepted the coffee but set it aside, choosing the top book in the stack instead. “It was a cover for a coven of blind witches. They eluded capture for many years simply because local hunters could not decipher their means of communication.”

“And you think there might be something there to break the curse?” Sam asked as he settled back in his chair and straightened his pile of notes.

“No.” Cas's voice, faint and weary, made Sam look up at him. The angel was just staring at the page before him—well, maybe not staring, but his head was bent over it and his hand wasn't moving over the braille letters. “This will not be an easy curse to break.”

Sam looked back down at the few notes he'd been able to make so far. It all seemed so trivial—what could they possibly have to break a curse powerful enough to affect an angel?

* * *

Dean almost felt guilty— _almost—_ when he pulled Baby back into her parking space a few hours later. He hadn't meant to stay out for so long, just for a quick bite at the diner in town and maybe a quick call to Mom (no matter what Cas said, Mom and Jack really did deserve to know what happened).

The labyrinth had been so dark and twisted, though, that he'd found himself unwilling to give up the peaceful sunlight for the stone halls of the bunker so quickly. So he'd turned the music up, parked down by the old bridge, and let the warmth of the sunlight away the lingering fear and anger from that morning's argument.

Maybe he wasn't being fair. Hell, he'd never taken it easy in his life, why should he expect it from Cas at a time like this? And it wasn't like reading a book ever hurt anyone (except that creepy one in the locked case that was bound in werewolf pelt and kept screaming if you took the cover off).

“Sam?” Dean called, kicking the door shut behind him. He'd remembered (barely) to ask for a salad to-go for his brother, and some soup for Cas, since the two of them probably wouldn't have stopped to eat without someone to make them. Sure, the lettuce was wilted and the soup was cold, but it was the thought that counted.

“Dean?” Sam came trotting out of the hall to the dormitories, wearing fresh clothes and still scrubbing a towel over his face. “Jeez, how long were you out there?”

“What the hell were you doing?”

Sam pulled up short, flipping the towel over one shoulder. “Cas fell asleep, I just ran back to change and shave. Why, what's up?”

Fear and anger twisted back together in Dean's stomach. “You left him _alone_?”

“Come on, Dean,” Sam called after him. Dean had dropped the to-go bag and he could hear Sam fussing about the soup now spilling over the floor. “He's just sleeping. I was gone for like ten minutes.”

Dean ignored his brother's protest and stormed into the library. Cas was there, as Sam had said. Head on the table, pillowed by his arms. Sound asleep. At least Sam had taken the time to drape a blanket over Cas's shoulders, but that was all.

“Cas?” Dean crossed the room to his friend's side and leaned over to shake him by one shoulder. “C'mon, man, let's get you back to bed.”

Cas barely stirred, mumbled something in Enochian, and settled back down on his folded arms.

“Hey, buddy,” Dean pushed a chair to one side to crouch a bit closer to Cas. “C'mon, you know how pissy Sam gets if you sleep in the library.”

Nothing. Cas didn't move, his face drawn and pale even asleep. With a frown, Dean brushed the back of his hand against his friend's forehead and let out a loud curse.

“Dean?” Sam was in the doorway, ruined takeout bag in his hands, soup-stained towel poking out of the top. “What's wrong?”

“He has a fever,” Dean said. He slowly straightened up and turned to face Sam, trying to hold his temper in check. “Dammit, Sammy, I told you to keep an eye on him!”

Sam dropped the back in the hall outside the library and trotted over to check for himself, his forehead creasing in a frown. “Higher than this morning,” he muttered, almost low enough that Dean couldn't hear.

Almost. “You mean he had one this morning?”

The younger Winchester shot him a guilty look. “It was only for an hour, it broke before you woke up.”

“What the hell, Sam!” Dean shook his head, not noticing how his brother flinched away at his tone of voice. “Why didn't you tell me?”

“Cas didn't...”

“No, no, I know why _he_ didn't tell me,” Dean interrupted. He gently peeled the blanket away from Cas's shoulders and fought down another outburst at the red stain darkening the fabric. It wasn't much, probably just one of the cuts was a little deeper than they'd thought, and it hadn't spread very far. But it was one more thing that Sam hadn't noticed...that _he_ hadn't noticed...and now, as usual, Cas was paying the price.

“ _He_ didn't tell me 'cause he's a stubborn bastard who doesn't know how to take care of himself,” Dean continued, peeling Cas off the table and wrapping one arm behind his back. To his credit, Sam took the other side so they could more easily half-carry him over to one of the library sofas. “I wanna know why _you_ didn't tell me.”

Sam was quiet as they lowered Cas onto the sofa, as Dean grabbed the blanket to tuck over him, and as Dean spotted the untouched cup of coffee at Cas's place on the table and drank it down in one long pull.

“It just didn't seem important,” Sam finally said. “He was getting better, he didn't want...I'm sorry.”

Dean let the mug hit the table a little harder than he meant and rubbed one hand over his face. “Ice water and towels,” he snapped, pointing at Sam. “This isn't over,” he called out as his brother left the library.

Hands shaking, Dean tugged a chair over to Cas's side and tried to smooth the blanket over his chest and stomach. Sam hadn't been there, in the gate with the hellhounds, when Cas had just dropped and Dean couldn't tell if he was dead or alive. Even the warm, peaceful light of the library couldn't dispel that memory.

“C'mon, buddy,” Dean murmured, resting one hand on Cas's chest near his heart. “You've gotta fight this.”

* * *

The heat was back. It flowed through his vessel, sluggish and thick. His limbs were heavy and awkward, and his side and back burned.

“ _Don't be such a wuss, Cas, it's just a fever._ ”

The tone, more than the words themselves, pulled his mind around to the presence next to him. The solid, steady thrum of a soul he had once pieced back together called to him.

“ _That's right. Come on, man, open...wake up for me, okay?_ ”

Dean.

With tremendous effort, Castiel forced his eyes open only to be met with the same encroaching darkness. His eyes burned with fever, his head felt heavy and light at the same time.

“There he is,” Dean said. Though his words were cheerful, his tone was measured and quiet. Worried, Castiel realized.

“S...sorry.”

“Oh, come on, not you too,” Dean grumbled. There was a splash of water and something deliciously cool and wet was laid across his forehead. “Just...don't do this, okay? You've gotta let me know when something's wrong.”

Castiel grunted and shifted a little to get more comfortable. He was on one of the library sofas, he realized. Covered with a thin wool blanket.

The last thing he remembered was resting his head for a few minutes while Sam had gone back to the shelves for a guide on European herbal medicine. “Sam?”

“He'll be back,” Dean replied cryptically. “How are you feeling? Injuries, I mean?”

Castiel gingerly pulled his right arm free of the blankets to flex it. “The break has healed sufficiently.”

Dean snorted. “How much is that?”

He hesitated, but Dean had asked for honesty. “The bone itself has fused back together, though I estimate another three hours will be needed to return to proper strength.”

The hunter gave a sigh of relief. “What about the rest?”

With a grimace, Castiel tried to sit up, relieved when one of Dean's arms slid behind his back to ease him up and place some kind of cushion behind him. “They will take longer.”

Dean busied himself straightening the pillows before gently lowering Castiel to recline against them. “Longer?”

He sighed. “The curse is interfering with my grace. Even with the state of Heaven it should not have taken so long for a mere physical injury to heal,” he explained.

“Cas,” Dean's voice was tinged with impatience. “Just gimme a time frame for now and save the big explanation for Sammy, okay?”

“Two days,” he finally said.

Dean let out a sigh of relief. “That's not so bad,” he said. “So, what, we kick around here for a while, maybe find you some podcasts?”

“Dean...”

He heard Dean take in a breath to answer, but his friend didn't speak. Instead, there was a slight popping sound from somewhere further in the bunker, followed by the fall of broken glass.

“Dean?”

“Stay here,” Dean patted him on the shoulder. “I'll check it out.”

“Dean!”

“I'll be right back,” the hunter said, already moving out of the library.

Castiel bit back a curse of frustration. His body was intent on betraying him with its weakness, it seemed. The fever was still there, dragging hot fingers through his brain and muddying his remaining senses.

The bunker around him was silent. Distant whispers of footsteps, the gurgle of water in the pipes, the fall of ice in the kitchen freezer.

Then a footstep in the hall. It wasn't one of the brothers', or of anyone else he recognized. Castiel threw himself out of the sofa and crossed the room toward the door that lead to the rest of the bunker. He stumbled over a chair that hadn't been pushed in all the way, and misjudged one step and nearly knocked a lamp over but caught himself both times.

Castiel reached the wall without other incident. He knew the bunker too well, had spent far too much time in it, for a simple thing like a loss of sight to limit his movements. Back to the wall beside the doorway, he waited for any further sound, whether of an intruder or one of the Winchesters.

There it was. The slight scrape of leather over stone. Castiel clenched his teeth and flicked his hand out, calling his angel blade to his palm. He could feel it now, feel the hatred and rot twisting off of the ruined soul of the creature that stalked him.

A slight movement, a slight displacement of air, was all he needed to strike. Castiel lunged across the doorway, catching the creature off-guard with a thrust aimed at its core.

It gave a mighty laugh and caught his wrist, twisting him around to pin him against the wall of the library.

“Well, well, well,” Shax said, twisting mercilessly at Castiel's newly-healed arm. “We meet again...angel.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry!
> 
> There was a lot of headcanon here, but I definitely think Cas would miss his wings more than his sight. A lot of birds navigate by the magnetic poles, so why can't angel navigation work the same way? 
> 
> I'm seriously trying to finish this over the next two weeks. So seriously that I finally got a copy of Link's Awakening for Switch and made myself promise not to touch it until this was finished.
> 
> We're past the hard part anyway. This chapter was all the stuff I'm not comfortable writing--the medical stuff, and the arguments and disagreements and misunderstandings. But hey, sometimes we have to write uncomfortable things to grow as writers, right?


	4. And keep disaster evermore contained

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Here it is! Finally at the end!
> 
> I can't believe it's actually finished. Seriously, I half expect I'm going to suddenly realize I forgot to show up for class and now I won't be able to graduate (even though that was fifteen years ago), and this will all have been a dream.
> 
> (There's some behind the scenes stuff for the story in the end notes, I thought someone might enjoy seeing some of my thought process.)

“What a fascinating home you have,” Shax continued, twisting Castiel's arm up nearly to the breaking point so that the angel gasped in pain and writhed against the wall. “To think. An angel and the Men of Letters. Will wonders ever cease?”

Castiel grit his teeth, flailing uselessly at the wall with his left hand. There was nothing in reach, nothing he could use as a weapon against his tormentor. He still held his blade in his right hand, but it was only a matter of time before Shax pulled it away. He tried to growl out a warning, a threat, but his throat closed and he could only cough pitifully, unable to draw in a full breath.

“What was that?” Shax leaned in closer, his foul breath hot on Castiel's ear. “You'll have to speak up, little bird.”

He slammed his head back into the demon's face, feeling something give as Shax jerked back with a curse.

Good. Nose for nose.

The demon still held his right arm bent behind his back, but had stepped away now, so Castiel turned into the hold and pushed off against the wall in one smooth move. He caught Shax just below the knee with a vicious kick and followed it up with an open palm strike to the demon's kidneys.

In the labyrinth Castiel had been wounded, disoriented, and weak.

The bunker was as familiar to him as his own vessel, and even with his injuries Castiel's grace flowed through him to strengthen him for battle.

This abomination would learn to fear an Angel of the Lord.

The shock of the blows had caused Shax to release his hold on Castiel's right wrist, and the angel quickly transferred his blade to his uninjured hand. He took a step back, settling into a guard position. The hall was too narrow to circle his opponent, but that would limit Shax's mobility as well.

The demon was climbing to his feet, anger practically radiating off of his essence. “You can't see me,” he snarled.

Castiel tilted his head, easily following the slight scrape of a foot against stone that meant the demon had shifted position. “I don't need to see you to kill you,” he challenged. “Break the curse and I'll make it quick.”

Shax laughed, low and harsh. “The little birdie has teeth!” he crowed. “If I had known you'd be this much fun I would played with you longer.”

Castiel sensed the demon moving, a slight backward shift of weight that would precede a forward attack. He had not forgotten the demon's hideous strength, the unarmed blows that had incapacitated him so easily. Before Shax could charge Castiel feinted forward, spinning back to the right when the demon lunged to meet his false attack to the left.

Shax was fast. He was fast enough to get a strike in, but barely clipped Castiel's shoulder as the angel was already turning away from the blow. It was a parallel to their fight in the labyrinth but this time Castiel had the advantage of knowing his surroundings. He kicked off the wall as he turned, his sense of the space around him effortless even without his sight, and delivered a slash to the demon's back.

The demon howled in pain and lunged forward, catching Castiel by his left arm to slam it against the wall in an attempt to knock the blade free. They were several feet further down the hall from the library's door, and by Castiel's mental map he was close to a small niche with an ornate urn on a shelf.

He was off by three inches, but that was still close enough for his right hand to close on the ceramic urn and shatter it against the demon's head. Shax gave another cry and grabbed Castiel by the shirt to fling him even further down the hall.

Castiel rolled with the landing, coming up into a crouch with his blade held up in a guard position once more. Shax was cursing in one of the fouler early tongues, his words punctuated with the faint clatter of pottery shards on the ground. “You insignificant little bastard!” Shax roared. The framed pictures on the walls around them rattled in place, and deeper in the bunker Castiel heard another light bulb explode.

“Not as insignificant as you might believe,” Castiel replied. He could hear Sam and Dean, their footsteps hurried as they ran to the source of the commotion. They would arrive with more weapons to fight the demon, as long as Castiel could keep him distracted. With a deep breath, he summoned his grace in a show of force. Not as mighty as it had once been, when his powerful wings had spread out above him in a display of strength and dominance, but it should be enough for this filth of the pit.

He could feel the heavenly power radiating off of him, sending the shadows of his ruined wings dancing off of the walls of the hall behind him. Something in the bunker's systems gave out in an explosion of sparks and the emergency sirens began to blare. Several floors below him the whine of the main generator was silenced as the bunker's systems shifted to prevent another power surge, and Castiel knew the hallways would now be lit only by red emergency lights, which would add to the confusion of shadows his wings were casting on the walls.

“What...” Shax's voice faltered, one foot scraping through shards of ceramic as he took a step back. “That's impossible. You're not strong enough.”

Hearing the confusion in the demon's voice, Castiel launched himself forward and slashed at his opponent's face. Shax gave a cry of dismay and brought his arms up to protect himself but the angel blade bit eagerly into the demon's flesh. Shax managed to catch Castiel's left arm with both hands and tried to twist it away, and Castiel pulled himself in with the momentum of the demon's attack to plant his right hand on Shax's forehead.

“No!” Shax managed to twist himself free and plant a knee in Castiel's side, right on top of the wound from the angel blade. Castiel bit back a cry of pain and folded over, hand going to his side where he found a patch of wet warmth slowly spreading out from the site of the wound.

He fell back a few steps, trying to hold his guard up while covering the wound with his free hand, seeking to staunch the bleeding. Shax was breathing heavily, his weight shifting erratically as he nursed his own wounds.

“What are you?” Shax finally asked. “You're not an archangel. You're not wearing a human vessel. You were weak enough to be affected by my curse, but strong enough to defy me now. You're like no angel I've ever seen.”

“No,” Castiel twirled the blade in his hand, lifting bloody fingers to beckon the demon forward. “But I am the _last_ angel you'll ever see.”

* * *

“Sammy!” Dean pounded on his brothers door, checking back over his shoulder. Something felt wrong. He'd heard a bulb pop, and that usually meant something supernatural and weird, but so far everything seemed normal.

The door swung open, revealing Sam. Hair all over the place, shirt wrinkled, eyes half-lidded and puffy with sleep. “What, Dean?”

Of course he's getting the bitch-face right out of the gate. Yes, he'd sent his thirty-something brother to bed, but to be fair the dude had been up all night. And Dean had still been angry, and it had been easier to send Sam to another room and just focus on helping Cas while he cooled off. “Something's up, man. Something's popping bulbs again.”

Sam's face creased in concern. He ran one hand through his hair in a futile attempt to tame it and pulled a face when he hit a snarl. “Is it Cas?”

Dean shook his head. “Look, can you help me check the warding? I've got a bad feeling, Sammy.”

A distant crash interrupted any reply Sam had been about to make, and the brothers stared at each other in concern for a split second. Then Dean turned and ran back down the hall, Sam at his heels, and slid to a stop just inside the door to the infirmary.

It was quiet. It looked undisturbed, except that another of the overhead lights had blown out. Dean almost relaxed, but one of Sam's hands tightened around his arm. He glanced over his shoulder, but Sam was looking deeper into the room, his face pale. Dean twisted his head around to look in the same direction and stopped still.

It was the lacquered box. It was in the same place, but twisted and blackened as though it had burned from the inside. The lid was peeled back, cracked nearly in two, and the delicate filigree had melted away to pool around the base of the box. There was a ring of ash around the box in a definite pattern, almost like the wing prints left behind when an angel was killed, except this was some kind of runic script.

Then something else exploded, deeper in the bunker, and the lights cut off above them. Dean swore and spun around again, this time headed for the library in the glow of the emergency lights. He had his gun, but he didn't even have the devil's trap bullet with him. It'd be like throwing gravel at a moving train, but if that demon was back and after Cas there wasn't time to get anything better.

“Dean!”

He turned back for a second as Sam sprinted up to meet him. He hadn't even realized the younger Winchester hadn't followed him right out of the infirmary.

“Here,” Sam tossed him a bottle of holy water and held out an angel blade. “All I could grab.”

Dean took the items gratefully. It still wasn't much, but it was better than plain old hollow-points. “Thanks, Sammy.”

“We can try an exorcism,” Sam said, pushing Dean forward. “If he's too powerful it won't work but it might distract him.”

It might already be too late. Dean's gut twisted with fear as they neared the intersecting corridor that would take them to the library. He should never have left Cas alone—he'd left the angel weak and feverish on the library sofa with the very real possibility of a vengeful demon out for blood.

“..the _last_ angel you'll ever see.”

Cas's voice was clear and defiant as the brothers rounded the corner to the final hallway. Dean pulled up short—whatever he'd been expecting, it wasn't this. Cas, blood-streaked but defiant, taunting the demon to attack him with a wave of bloodied fingers. As for Shax his nose was flattened, his forearms were dripping with blood, and his wild eyes were tinged with panic and uncertainty.

He could tell the instant Cas knew they were there. It was the slightest tilt of the angel's head, though his attention never truly wavered from his foe. The angel gave a feral smile, blood from a split lip spreading over his teeth, and launched himself forward at the demon again.

“Sammy, now!” Dean shouted. He fumbled to twist the cap off the holy water, finally just hacking it off with the angel blade. He flicked the bottle sideways, sending a sparkling arc of holy water over the two combatants as Cas reached the demon.

The water did nothing to Cas, of course, but Shax snatched his arm away with a howl of pain. This gave Cas an opening to carve a furrow in the demon's ribs, though before he could reach anything vital Shax managed to wrench him away and backhanded him across the face.

Cas's knees buckled, but Shax grabbed him by the collar and hauled him up enough to knee him in the gut, then dropped him with an elbow to the back of the head. “Pretty good for a poor blind birdie,” Shax sneered.

“ _Omnis immundus spiritus..._ ” Sam's Latin was clear and precise as always, and Dean felt a bit of dark pleasure as Shax's body jerked in reaction to the exorcism. The demon twisted to stare balefully at them, eyes narrowing in recognition when he saw Dean.

“ _You_ ,” Shax snarled. He slowly rose to his feet, wiping blood away from his face with the back of one hand. “You're the one who stole my playmate.”

Before Dean could react Shax had thrust one hand forward, his power slamming into both Winchesters and knocking them back down the hall. The angel blade tumbled out of Dean's grasp and he tried to lunge for it, but Shax jerked his head and the blade skittered out of reach.

“How could an impotent little worm like you dare to challenge me?” Shax snarled as he stalked toward the brothers. He'd taken some hard hits, though. Blood was streaming from the slashes that Cas had inflicted and he was limping heavily. He stopped a few paces away from Dean and raised one hand, fingers out, ready to clench it into a fist. Dean steeled himself for the pain, expecting the gut-wrenching tear of demonic power at any moment.

“No!” Cas, almost out of nowhere, tackled Shax around the middle and the two crashed to the ground. “Sam! Finish the exorcism!”

“I've had enough of you!” Shax roared. He managed to get enough leeway to punch Cas in the face. Once. Twice. Then he'd rolled on top of the angel, knees pinning Cas's arms down, one hand around the angel's throat. “I was gentle before, but now you will see the full extent of my power.”

He grabbed Cas by the face with his other hand, wrapping his palm and fingers over Cas's eyes. Dean fumbled for his gun, his blade, anything as the floor of the bunker began to shake and the walls groaned.

“Cas!” Sam cried out as the angel screamed, and stumbled to his feet with his own angel blade in hand. Dean finally managed to pull his gun out and unloaded it into Shax, though the hollow-point rounds were little more than a distraction to the demon.

Shax whirled around with a snarl and caught Sam by the wrist. He pulled him close for a moment to glare into his face, then backhanded the younger Winchester hard enough to send him crashing into Dean. “You will learn to fear me,” he sneered.

Then he vanished in a shower of sparks, tearing open a path into the void despite the bunker's warding.

Dean pushed Sam away and struggled to his feet. “Cas?”

Cas was motionless except for the movement of his chest. Dean surged forward and slid to his knees beside his friend, gently cupping the angel's face to try to get his attention. Cas started at the touch, blind eyes darting around in panic.

“Cas?” Dean forced his voice to stay soft. “Buddy, you're kind of scaring me.”

“D-dean?”

“Yeah, man, I'm right here. Sam too,” he added, as his brother stumbled over to join them.

“Dean...” Cas flailed at his arm, finally getting a handful of the flannel of Dean's shirt. “I can't...I don't know where I am.”

Dean exchanged a look with his brother. “You're in the bunker, Cas.”

“No, Dean, I know,” Cas shook his head. His other hand had come up now, both gripping Dean's arm with the sort of trembling strength that could only come from fear. “I can't _feel_ it. I don't...I don't know where I am anymore.”

A sick feeling was building in Dean's stomach. He shared a glance with Sam, who had gathered up the hem of Cas's shirt to check the wound in his side. “You don't know?” Sam asked. “What does that mean, Cas?”

“You don't remember?” Dean asked. The angel was trembling, clinging to Dean's arm as though it was the only thing anchoring him in place. “Like the layout?”

Cas shook his head. He managed to pry one hand away from Dean and blindly reached for Sam, who quickly captured the hand between both of his own. “It's more, I can't feel it. The earth...the world...the time...”

Sam sucked in a breath. “You've lost your sense of place?”

Dean rolled his eyes at Sam—what the hell was a sense of place—but Cas was nodding. “It's more than that, but yes.”

“Birds navigate by magnetic poles,” Sam interjected when Cas seemed to weary or shaken to explain further. “Is it like that? You know where you are by another sense of the world?”

Cas was nodding again, turned a little more toward Sam than Dean.

Sam must have seen the confusion in his brother's eyes and tried to explain. “Imagine you're going up the stairs in the dark,” he began. “You can't see the staircase but you know how many stairs there are. Except you miscounted, and there's one fewer step than you thought and when you reach the top your foot just goes straight down.”

Dean shuddered. “Is that it, Cas?”

“It is a weak analogy,” Cas answered. His voice was pinched with exhaustion, now that the adrenaline of battle was passing. “But it is a similar loss of sense.”

The older Winchester swore. “Well, what's another curse to break? Sammy, call Rowena, tell her to get her little witchy ass back here if she knows what's good for her.”

“No,” Cas pulled his hand free of Sam's grip to grab Dean's shoulder. “If Shax has left the bunker...he's a danger to the entire world.”

“We have no idea where he is,” Dean countered, shaking his head. “C'mon, Cas. Let's get you patched up, then we can hunt down the crazy demon.”

“There are more lives than mine at stake, Dean.”

Dean heaved out a sigh. “I know that, man, but we don't even know where to start looking. Let's just take care of you, and I promise the second that son of a bitch pops up we'll gank 'im, okay?”

“That, uh,” Sam hesitated. “That might not be a problem.”

The other two looked at him—well, Dean looked at him and Cas angled his head toward Sam. Cas's stare had always been so intense...Dean would never get used to the blankness of the angel's eyes now. “Sammy?” Dean prompted.

“I might have...slipped my phone into his pocket when I attacked him.”

There was silence for a few seconds, then Dean's face split into a broad grin and he clapped Sam on the shoulder. “Sammy, you're a genius.”

Sam snorted. “Yeah, right. I'll remember you said that.”

“Genius for a very specific circumstance. Genius for stupid nerd things.”

Cas's eyes had been darting back and forth through this exchange. “I don't understand,” he finally interjected.

Sam smiled down at him, as Dean slid an arm behind the angel's shoulder to start pulling him to his feet. “My phone has GPS. We can track him.”

* * *

Castiel was tucked back in on the sofa in the library, after Dean treated his wounds and found a long sleeve T-shirt to replace the bloodied dress shirt, listening to the faint rustle of pages as the brothers pored over the books they'd collected to look for a solution to breaking the demon's curse. The alarms had long been silenced, the deep whir of the bunker's main generator a comforting hum beneath the yawning quiet of the emptiness of his senses.

It was dizzying. Castiel knew he was in the library, knew the floor was only a few feet away, but the space around him seemed to swim in and out of perspective. It felt like the sofa was floating in a vast sea of nothing, that if he took one step off of it he would continue falling into eternity.

But the silence was the worst. He was used to being able to hear the movements of the universe around them, the groan of the earth as it turned, the dance of the stars above. That had all been silenced, blocked from his knowledge by Shax's curse.

Dean's phone buzzed on the table. Castiel heard the older Winchester pick it up, then grunt and set it back down. “Rowena says she can get a flight tomorrow, but that's the soonest. Apparently she's out in the countryside helping some old friend lift a family curse.”

“Still hard to believe she's out there _lifting_ curses now.”

“Hey, you're the one who talked her over to the light side, Obi-Wan.”

“Shut up, Dean.”

More pages rustled. Castiel wished the brothers would talk more about what they were finding, even if it was nothing. The silence was maddening. He'd tried to sleep, but every time his body had begun to slide toward unconsciousness he'd flinch back awake due to an unpleasant sensation of falling. Sam had tried to explain that it was a familiar feeling to humans, but that explanation was less than comforting.

Castiel shifted restlessly. He'd expended more grace than he'd thought in the battle with Shax and his wounds now ached. At least his right arm had escaped further damage despite Shax's initial hold on him, but that was a small comfort. The demon's curse had burrowed into his true form, twisting his senses until his perception of the world around him was effectively destroyed.

“Hang on,” Sam's voice was sharp, almost eager, as it broke through the silence. “Got another ping on my phone.”

The keys of the laptop clicked for a moment, then Castiel heard the drag of Sam passing the computer over to Dean. The older Winchester gave a long, low whistle.

“Right?” Sam replied. “Seems too good to be true.”

“What is it?” Castiel asked. He could hear the brother's shuffling around, stacking papers and pushing books aside. “Sam?”

“We've got a possible location on Sam's phone,” Dean explained.

Castiel tried to reign in his impatience. He had already deduced that from their conversation. “Where?”

“You're not gonna believe this,” Sam said. “It's the crypt. Where we picked up the box.”

“Gotta be a trick, right?” Dean asked. “Why would he go there?”

“The disciple of Solomon might have left other artifacts behind,” Castiel said. He struggled to push himself up, fighting the wave of dizziness that accompanied any change of position. He'd been pulled through the void by demons before; this blankness of the senses was not dissimilar.

“It's as good a shot as anything else.” Sam's voice sounded doubtful. “We can keep the search going on the way, track him if he goes anywhere else.”

“And if he just dumped your phone there and moved on?”

“Then I get my phone back.”

The room fell silent. This was one of the times Castiel missed his sight the most. The brothers communicated so much non-verbally—through expressions and body language and even hand signals. It was like missing two-thirds of the conversation.

“All right. Cas, you stay here, we're gonna check it out.”

“No, Dean, wait,” Castiel shoved the blankets away and swung his legs over the side of the sofa to stand up. Except his perspective of the floor was incorrect and his feet slid out from under him as he tried to stand. For one, awful moment he was falling forward into a yawning, empty space then the floor slammed into him before he had a chance to brace himself.

Dean was swearing as he gently grabbed Castiel by the arms and lifted him back to the sofa. “You're in no shape to come with us, man.”

He grabbed onto the hunter's sleeves, trying to hold him there by sheer force of will. “You cannot leave me out of this.”

“Cas, you can't see,” Dean's voice was blunt. The words hurt, even though Castiel knew his friend had his best interests at heart. “More than that, you don't even have...whatever it was. Sense of place, or whatever. You can't even stand up without help, man, you need to stay here.”

“Don't leave me...” Castiel choked the words off. He couldn't burden Dean with his own terror. Without the Winchesters' presence the bunker would be worse than the void of the Empty. There were no other hunters with the faint sounds of their own lives to help mark the passage of time. There would be nothing...an endless void of darkness and silence with no relief.

“Hey, hey, it's okay,” Dean's hands were on his shoulders, the gentle pressure of his grip easing some of the tension in Castiel's muscles. He realized, belatedly, that he'd been shaking. “I just don't want you to get hurt, okay?”

“He might be safer with us, Dean,” Sam commented. “You said it yourself, he can't even stand up without help. There's no one here to help him.”

“It's a bad idea, Sam.”

“Think about it. I mean, what's he gonna do if we leave him here alone?”

Castiel tried not to look as miserable as that thought made him feel. He would be packed in a corner, unable to move or even sleep to pass the time, until someone returned to the bunker. Even taking him to Heaven would be better than that—if the angels themselves couldn't break the curse they might at least let him rest in one of the individual heavens.

“All right,” Dean breathed out. His voice had softened a bit, and his hands shifted down to rest on Castiel's forearms. “But you have to promise to be careful, all right? Don't overdo it.”

Relief flooded Castiel's being. He nodded, even though the motion made the world spin around him even more. “I promise, Dean.”

* * *

It was six long hours to the old church from the bunker, but Sam had started to think this was a bad idea after only two. Even after he'd tucked himself in the back with Cas the ride had been hard on the angel. Every curve of the road, every bump or jostle, seemed to only disorient him further. Sam's hand was practically numb from how hard Cas had been squeezing it, and his voice was hoarse from keeping up a one-sided dialogue to try to keep the angel grounded.

Maybe it would have been kinder to leave him at the bunker. Even if he'd been helpless there, they could have called another hunter back or even gotten Mom and Jack to head that way.

But it was too late for any of that, as Dean nosed the Impala off the road into the long grass outside the abandoned church. “All right,” he called over his shoulder as he cut the engine. “We good on the plan?”

“You didn't make a plan, Dean,” Sam complained. He was trying to discreetly work some feeling back into his hand since Cas had released it

Dean held up his gun.

“That's not a plan!” Sam shook his head. “He's a demon, you can't just shoot him.”

“I can if these are devil's trap bullets.”

“That won't hold him,” Cas offered. “He was able to get through the devil's trap you left behind in the labyrinth box.”

“Then I'll distract him,” Dean countered. “And you, Sam, can gank him while he's focused on me.”

Sam ran his hands over his face with a groan. That was even worse than the last plan. “No, Dean.”

“Well, you got any ideas? Believe me, Sammy, I'm all ears.”

“I'll distract him."

Sam glanced over at Cas, who seemed pale but determined. “That's not a good idea, either.”

“Shax...he seems fascinated with me,” Cas continued. He reached out blindly with one hand, nearly clipping Dean across the face before settling on the back of the front seat. “I believe he will be unable to resist the opportunity to finish me off.”

“No way,” Dean said, at the same time as Sam voiced his own objections.

“Cas, you're not even a match for him now,” Sam continued.

“Even if you had your spooky bird senses, or whatever,” Dean argued, “this isn't the bunker, man. This is unfamiliar ground.”

“He's a demon,” Cas set his shoulders, schooling his face into a determined expression. “I can exploit his weakness.”

“Oh, come on,” Dean rolled his eyes and started checking the other weapons he'd brought along. “The dude tied you to a wall, man. No offense, but what could you possibly hold over him?”

“He doesn't know my name.”

That brought Dean up short, and the brothers stared at Cas for a second. “Come again?” Dean finally snapped. “Your name?”

Cas shifted on the seat, wrapping an arm around his stomach. The gesture could have been an unconscious one at the memories of his recent injury or from some spasm of pain, but his face was unreadable. “He was most insistent in the labyrinth. The...the interrogation. He wanted my name.”

“Why would he want your name, Cas?” Sam asked. He held a hand out to shut Dean up as the older Winchester started to bluster a response—no, he was not going to Cas against a demon like Shax when Cas was literally running blind, but they might be able to use this information anyway.

“There are spells,” Cas explained. “Very ancient Enochian magics that made use of an angel's true name. They're mostly forgotten, but it is likely that Shax knows some of these spells.”

“What kind of spells?”

Cas shook his head. “I don't know the full extent of the magic, they were lost before my creation. But we all heard stories, that in the wrong hands such spells could be used to alter the foundations of the universe itself.”

“Still not happening,” Dean interjected. “You're staying right here, got it?”

“Dean...”

“No, Cas! End of discussion! I'm not gonna let you throw yourself away, man.”

“We can offer something else,” Sam cut in before the argument built any headway. “If he wants your name for something like that, Cas, we can go in and offer him something else.”

“Like what?” Dean demanded.

Sam gave a shrug. “The Angel Tablet? Or at least Kevin's notes on it. Think about it, if Shax knows old enough magic to make use of an angel's true name, he might be able to read the tablet, right?”

“But we don't have the Angel Tablet,” Dean argued.

“We're not actually giving it to him,” Sam explained. “Just...tempting him.”

Dean's eyes lit up. “Then we gank him!”

Cas's face was creased in concentration, then he nodded in agreement. “It might work. One of the tablets would be a tempting offering.”

“All right,” Dean nodded and swung the door of the car open. “Cas, you stay here, we'll be back.”

“What?” Cas's voice was tinged with panic, and he managed to lunge forward and grab a fistful of Dean's sleeve. “You can't leave me here.”

“We can't take you in there,” Sam replied. He tried to keep his voice soft and patient as he gently loosened the angel's grip on his brother's sleeve. “C'mon, Cas, you'd be in danger.”

“Am I not in danger here?”

Sam hesitated and shared a look with Dean, who heaved out a sigh and shook his head. “Back pew,” Dean said firmly. “But you park your ass there and stay there, got it?”

Cas's features relaxed in gratitude and he nodded. Sam slid out of the car to rifle through the trunk for anything that might prove they had the Angel Tablet as Dean gently pulled Cas to his feet. They wound up with a couple of papers torn from an old notebook covered in old Enochian runes—Sam was pretty sure it was just an old translation project from all those years ago when Cas had branded their ribcages to keep them hidden, but it might be enough to bluff Shax.

“Ready?” he asked.

Dean nodded, one hand wrapped around Cas's upper arm. They made their way into the church slowly, Dean coaching Cas over the rough terrain and up the few steps. Just inside, at the backmost pew, Dean guided the angel down to sit and placed an angel blade on the seat next to him. “Just in case,” he warned.

“Here,” Sam had pulled out an old phone—it was one with an actual physical keyboard, not a touch screen. “I have mom's number already typed in. If anything happens...well, if you need anything just hit this button and you'll call her,” he explained, guiding the angel's fingers to the call button on the keypad.

Sam couldn't quite shake the feeling that they were abandoning Cas, even if it was for his own good. They couldn't drag him into the fight with Shax, not in his current state, but even still he couldn't help but feel that they shouldn't leave him behind.

“Ready?” Dean asked, braced against the door to the crypt.

He nodded, patting the jacket pocket where he'd stuffed the papers. “Ready.”

* * *

It could have been ten minutes or an hour. Time seemed to spiral past as Castiel waited in the silence of the abandoned sanctuary. The phone in his hand and the angel blade at his side—beyond that the world was nothing but a vast, empty void. He strained his ears for any sound from the crypt below. A voice, the clash of battle, a scream of pain, anything, but the silence stretched around him.

There was a small sound at the back of the sanctuary. Nothing more than the crash of a brick falling loose from the masonry, but it was enough to startle Castiel and make him loose his grip on the phone. He shifted himself painfully down to his knees to search for the phone on the cold stone floor. It was dizzying as his senses told him there would be nothing beneath his hand if he set it down, while his memory assured him the floor was level and even apart from a few cracks.

His searching fingers located the phone, and with a sigh of relief he started to pick it up...only for the plastic to snap under the weight of someone's foot.

“Well, well, well. What do we have here.”

He'd left the angel blade on the pew.

In a desperate lunge Castiel twisted back to grasp for the angel blade but Shax let out a cackle of glee and grabbed him by the arm to fling him out into empty space. He crashed into a pew, his weight enough to break through the rotted wood onto the stone below.

“Little bird,” Shax boomed, his voice echoing in the space around them. “You just keep crawling back for more. What sense should I take this time, hmm?”

Castiel held a hand out, trying to crawl backward away from the demon's heavy footsteps even as the world seemed to twist around him. “I came...with a bargain,” he gasped out.

Shax's footsteps hesitated. “Interesting,” the demon mused. He was close, perhaps close enough to touch, though it was nearly impossible to tell. “What could you offer me, little bird?”

He could only pray the Winchesters had heard the commotion and were on the way. “My name. In exchange for my sight...I give you my name.”

The demon let out a roar of laughter. “I don't need your name anymore, _Cas_ ,” he teased. Castiel started, which earned another laugh from the demon. “Oh, yes, One of your little friends said it. Now, that's obviously not your full name, but it's only a matter of time.”

A hand gripped Castiel's hair and wrenched his head back, and now he could feel the demon's breath on his face. “Someone will know,” Shax purred. “Then again...I won't need it after today, will I?”

In a move that he had learned more from Dean's poorly-budgeted movies than the man himself, Castiel drove one knee upward with as much force as he could muster. It did not have the same effect on a demon as it would a human, but it was enough to stun Shax and knock grip loose and let Castiel scramble to his feet.

Shax howled in rage, and even though the floor felt as though it was dropping under his feet even as he ran Castiel made for door to the crypt. He couldn't even be sure he was going the right direction, but he had to stay out of the demon's grasp at all cost.

A weight slammed into Castiel from behind, knocking him into the wall of the sanctuary that was suddenly in front of him.

“I've had enough of you,” Shax snarled in his ear. The demon flipped him around, slamming his back into the wall hard enough that his head bounced off of it. “No more games, or tricks, or running.”

The demon's hands were around his throat. Castiel gasped and flailed out, managing to grip the demon's tunic by the shoulders.

Shax leaned in closer, his hands tightening to choke the breath out of Castiel. He was so close now that Castiel could feel the heat radiating off the demon's vessel. He tried to shove at the demon, managing to get one hand on Shax's chin and the other on his temple, but the demon just laughed.

“Such a pity, I never did get your name,” the demon whispered, practically into Castiel's ear.

He tried to answer, but the grip on his throat was too tight for more than a garbled sound.

Shax loosened his hold, his voice little more than a sneer. “What was that?”

Castiel snarled, the hand on the demon's chin finding its way up to the side of the demon's head, opposite his other hand. “My name is Castiel,” he rasped, pouring every spark of his grace through his hands into the abomination before him.

The demon shrieked and tried to pull away but it was too late. Holy light was flooding the twisted being, burning it to nothing as Castiel threw everything he had into the smiting. Shax's knees buckled and they crashed to the floor together and still he held on. The demon scratched at his face and beat at his arms, but every blow was weaker and weaker...until there was nothing. Nothing but the stink of sulfur and the tang of ozone and an empty corpse.

“Cas!”

There were footsteps, the rush of boots up the steps that lead to the crypt, and then someone was rolling him away from the remains of his enemy. He was lifted up by the head and shoulders, held close, voices overhead overlapping and arguing with the dizzying spin of the universe.

Slowly... _slowly_...the darkness blanketed his vision began to melt away to reveal the worried face of Dean Winchester.

“Hello...Dean,” Castiel coughed. He tried to lean away from the hunter to spit out a mouthful of blood, but Dean refused to relinquish his hold so the blood just dribbled out of his mouth onto the front of Dean's flannel shirt.

Dean's eyes widened when he met Castiel's gaze. “You can see me?”

Castiel nodded, his eyes sliding closed in exhaustion. “Shax?”

“Oh, he's dead,” Dean replied, with a disgusted sound in the back of his throat. “ _Really_ dead. Think extra crispy.”

He forced his eyes open to look up at his friend. “Dean...I'm sorry.”

“Sorry?” Dean's eyes flew wide. His grip on Castiel's shoulders tightened, as though to hold him there. “Sorry for what?”

“I think...I overdid it.”

There was silence in the church for a moment, which was broken by a burst of laughter from Sam. Castiel let himself relax in Dean's grip as the older hunter shook his head with a rueful smile. “Just don't do it again, all right?”

Castiel let out a sigh and closed his eyes as the warmth of his unfettered grace spread through his battered vessel, finally knitting together the injuries he'd carried for far too long. “All right.”

* * *

Dean had insisted on wrapping him in a blanket from the Impala and tucking him into a corner of the crypt while the brothers searched for any other artifacts left behind. There were injuries his grace couldn't heal so easily—the wounds from the angel blade, and the fatigue from Shax's spell. The only cure for those was time, but it would be time more easily spent now that the spell was broken.

Castiel had watched the brothers for a few minutes as they searched the crypt before closing his eyes and letting his head rest against the wall behind him. Rest would be pleasant now, with the rumble of the earth beneath him and the movement of the spheres above.

“Cas?” Dean had dropped the knapsack with the little they had found on the ground next to him (some ancient jewelry, a leather-bound book of poison recipes, a stone dagger with Incan pictographs). “You ready, buddy?”

He let himself be pulled to his feet, stumbling against Dean as the hunter held him up until he could regain his balance. “I'm ready.”

Dean's smile had an almost physical warmth as he wrapped an arm around Castiel, more for companionship than assistance. “Let's go home.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hooray! At the end at last! Many thanks to Cocoa_Caramel_Macchiato_Latte for their patience as this beast took far too long to finish.
> 
> Thanks for reading and sticking with me! The behind the scenes stuff is below, so feel free to skip if you're not interested.
> 
> The Sonnet:
> 
> I actually wrote a full sonnet for this story, the chapter titles are from that. It doesn't appear in the story itself but it was part of the thought process:
> 
> For countless days my foe in battle stood  
> Against my weakened flesh he did lay siege  
> And so I bid my wisdom to conceive  
> A way to trap my enemy for good
> 
> Thus, in a labyrinth box I built a cage  
> And in five sacred riddles hid the key  
> To trap this spirit of iniquity  
> And keep disaster evermore contained
> 
> Yet should a wayward soul be trapped therein  
> The gates will hinder not the sanctified
> 
> For those who shield and sharpen, gird and guide  
> And who, with humble heart, confess their sin
> 
> No righteous prison this should it divide  
> Evil without and innocence inside
> 
> I have a bachelor's degree in English (literature, not teaching). so I've always enjoyed traditional poetry. I love the idea of finding ways to express yourself within a rigid structure. The lines in the third stanza describe the gates (shield and sharpen, gird and guide, confess your sins, etc), which is the other behind the scenes bit I was going to share.
> 
> The Gates:
> 
> I drew on a lot of different inspiration for the gates, and not all of it was ancient.
> 
> Gate of the Flesh: Stargate SG-1 first season episode "Thor's Hammer". They found a device that would let an ordinary human pass but trap and kill a Go'a'uld. I know there are angel and devil traps and all kinds of warding and sigils, but that's what first gave me the idea for doorways (two of the characters are trapped in a labyrinth in that episode, in fact)
> 
> Gate of the Spirit: First, which might be obvious, was the cave of wonders from Disney's Aladdin. Needing to reach a goal beyond a room filled with your greatest temptation. Secondly, there's a verse in Matthew in the Bible that says "What good is it to gain the whole world but lose your soul", which is essentially the test set in that gateway.
> 
> Gate of Fortitude: This one was inspired by Pilgrim's Progress. The main character is reaching a great house on his journey, but he has to walk between two lions to get to the house. It's a test of faith, because there is a tiny path he can walk that the lions can't reach, even though he can feel the wind from their claws as they swipe at him. 
> 
> Gate of Wisdom: Well, this was pretty much just as the story said it. You can read it in 1 Kings 3:16-28. I looked up a bunch of other stuff about Solomon and other riddles, but this one still seemed to be the best for the kind of challenges the gates needed to present.
> 
> Gate of Humility: As Dean puts it, some lame-ass fortune cookie riddle, right? This one was actually what helped inspire having a series of gates. I originally wanted the box to open from the inside with a riddle, but I couldn't come up with any that a demon wouldn't be able to answer. "What is the hardest thing in the world" is actually a pretty old Yiddish riddle, but the more I looked the more I couldn't find one that would stump a demon but not Dean and Cas. That was when I realized there needed to be a series of challenges that would be difficult for a demon to overcome--first a physical barrier, and if that broke down then it would test his greed, resolve in the face of fears, ability to act with discernment, and true humility or repentance. Of course, the gates after the first ended up failing, but I'm pretty sure I was as sick of the Disciple of Solomon by the end of the story as the boys were. 
> 
> I hope you enjoyed this little journey of insight! I'd be more than happy to include these in the future if anyone's interested, I know they're fun to read about sometimes.
> 
> See you next time!

**Author's Note:**

> Don't forget, I love requests! My schedule has opened up a lot lately, so feel free to make a request!


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